Maven Snapshot Repository vs Release Repository

Question

What is the difference between a Snapshot Repository and Release Repository?

This is with reference to setting up Repositories (lik

Answer 1

Release Artifacts

These are specific, point-in-time releases. Released artifacts are considered to be solid, stable, and perpetual in order to guarantee that builds which depend upon them are repeatable over time. Released JAR artifacts are associated with PGP signatures and checksums verify both the authenticity and integrity of the binary software artifact. The Central Maven repository stores release artifacts.

Snapshot Artifacts

Snapshots capture a work in progress and are used during development. A Snapshot artifact has both a version number such as “1.3.0” or “1.3” and a timestamp. For example, a snapshot artifact for commons-lang 1.3.0 might have the name commons-lang-1.3.0-20090314.182342-1.jar.

Taken from refcard