I came across this term while looking for build automation in devops, I still am unsure about what exactly this term means. Can anyone explain?
Artifacts are usually the outcome of build processes: an output or collection of files (ex. JAR, WAR, DLL, RPM,.MD,YAML), and possibly metadata and documentation files as well.
In broader terms: Any process that is applied to a source code repository could yield an artifact.
A release is usually a collection of artifacts.
Artifacts can be stored- separately from source code(say, in Github)- in artifact repositories, or artifact/package management systems. For example: Sonatype Nexus, and Jfrog Artifactory.