Maven generates it on deployment. Repository managers can generally create or repair them - though I've only done this with Archiva it is probably a feature of Artifactory too.
They are used by Maven for: * determining the results of version ranges, and what the latest release is (inside the artifact's directory) * determining what snapshot to use if you use build numbering (inside a given version directory) * other repository information such as a list of available plugins in a group Maven will work without them with the exception of the above functionality, but generally falls back to something that makes sense. Cheers Brett 2008/9/17 陈思淼 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > previously, we use a tool combine with maven1.0 and ant to manage our build > process. now we decide to transfer the platform to maven 2.0, the major > problem the artifacts we made by our own format, thanks to > artifactory<http://www.jfrog.org/sites/artifactory/latest/> , > we can use it function "import from path", first transfer our artifacts into > maven's format and generate the pom.xml,but there is problem, when deploy a > SNAPSHOT, the maven will generate a maven-metadata.xml to describe the > artifact's information, can anyone tell me how maven generate this > metadata.xml escpecially what's this file means? > > <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> > > >> > <metadata> <groupId>com.mycompany.notify</groupId> >> <artifactId>notify</artifactId> <version>1.1-SNAPSHOT</version> <versioning> >> <versions> <version>1.1-SNAPSHOT</version> <version>1.2-SNAPSHOT</version> >> </versions> <lastUpdated>20080917020637</lastUpdated> </versioning> >> </metadata> >> > -- Brett Porter Blog: http://blogs.exist.com/bporter/
