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Comparison: Dependency vs Artifact vs MavenProject | |
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Robert Scholte | |
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2015-12-28 | |
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Comparison: Dependency vs Artifact vs MavenProject | |
Here's a small matrix which should help you choosing the right instance. | |
In general: | |
* an Artifact holds a file mapped on a certain coordinate, | |
* a Dependency contains an artifact and has transitive information, | |
* a MavenProject holds a pom-file and optional mainfile and can have attached (=classified) files, all using the same GAV. | |
[] | |
*--------------------+-------------+----------------+---------------+ | |
|| || Dependency || Artifact || MavenProject || | |
*--------------------+-------------+----------------+---------------+ | |
| Has dependencies | yes | no | yes | | |
*--------------------+-------------+----------------+---------------+ | |
| filetype reference | type | file extension | packaging | | |
*--------------------+-------------+----------------+---------------+ | |
| version ranges | yes | no | no | | |
*--------------------+-------------+----------------+---------------+ | |
| attached artifacts | no | no | yes | | |
*--------------------+-------------+----------------+---------------+ | |
This implies the following: | |
* From dependency to artifact is possible, since you can map a type to an extension. | |
However, it is not possible to go from artifact back to dependency, there are several types which have jar as file extension. | |
* There's no such thing as transitive artifacts. Filtering during resolution is based on DependencyFilters, | |
ArtifactFilters can only be applied afterwards, hence are less efficient. |