THIS IS A TEST INSTANCE. ALL YOUR CHANGES WILL BE LOST!!!!
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Provides notation would be related to specification dependencies, but on the opposite side of the artifact relationship. For instance, Sun's JavaMail implementation would specify that it provides an implementation of the JavaMail API, as would the javamail library built by Geronimo. It would act as a reverse mapping of which API(s) are provided by a given artifact. This provides specification might need to be plural, to allow a single artifact to implement multiple APIs, thereby satisfying multiple specification dependencies from a single build.
Problem
Maven currently has a very concrete notion of what constitutes an artifact. In many ways, an artifact is assumed to be a physical, binary file out on one or more repositories. We have flirted with some forms of virtualization by supporting snapshot dependencies, RELEASE/LATEST meta-versions for plugins, and POM relocations. However, we currently have no way to handle 1:N mappings of a specified dependency to potentially satisfying artifacts.
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Once we have these two pieces, the specification-POM becomes simply another layer of metadata, much like a RELEASE version for a plugin.