Complex Java applications usually consist of multiple components. Each component can have multiple implementations, called artifacts. Artifacts in Java context are usually JAR files, but can also be WAR files or any other kind of file.

There are multiple incompatible ways of identifying (naming) Java artifacts and each build system often encourages usage of specific naming scheme. This means that Linux distributions also need to allow each artifact to be located using several different identifiers, possible using different schemes. On the other hand it is virtually impossible to every naming scheme, so there are some simplifications.

This chapter describes artifact different ways to identify and locate artifacts in system repository.