title: What are .pom files in Maven build artifacts?
body: <p>You can see from <a href="http://search.maven.org/#browse|1594583988" rel="noreferrer">browsing any repository</a> that Maven build artifacts contain <code>.pom</code> files. The contents of these files look a whole lot like <code>pom.xml</code> files. Where do these files come from? What are they used for? Additionally, build artifacts have <code>maven-metadata.xml</code> files, at least on <code>search.maven.org</code>, and these files have substantially the same content as the <code>.pom</code> files. What's the deal with that?</p>