I'm new to maven. Now I'm learning how to find and use libraries from maven repository. I see the maven central repository (mcr) as similar to cpan, just mcr is for java and cpan is for perl.
I see a big difference between mcr and cpan: When I search for something (for example "ssh") in the cpan web, I get a brief description of the packages found (what they are and what they do). And if I click on the packages link, then I get the full description (name, sypnosis, description, examples, etc).
Now, if I search for something (for example "ssh") in the mcr web, I get the list of artifacts found, their groupid, version and date, but there is no description on what an artifact is or what it does. Even if I click on the links (version link is the only one that gives some information), I don't get any description on what it is or what it does or examples.
Is there any way (i.e. some other page) to browse the repository artifacts in a more friendly way? (something similar to cpan)
You can use the mvnrepository website.
It is linked to the Maven Central Repository, and provides a more detailed view for each of the artifacts - including descriptions*.
So for example for the commons-httpclient artifact it has the following description:
The HttpClient component supports the client-side of RFC 1945 (HTTP/1.0) and RFC 2616 (HTTP/1.1) , several related specifications (RFC 2109 (Cookies) , RFC 2617 (HTTP Authentication) , etc.), and provides a framework by which new request types (methods) or HTTP extensions can be created easily.
*Note, the descriptions shown are taken from the <description> tag from the artifact's pom. This tag is optional, which means not every project actually defines it, so unfortunately you might not always see a description.