What do I use Artifacts in IntelliJ IDEA for?

Question

I just converted from Intellij 7 to 9 recently and am stymied by the idea of "Artifacts" in IDEA.

I usually build web applications in an exploded fashion to a directory named /build underneath one of my modules. The build is managed by an ant file - I run the ant target myself (either a quick update of the jsp files or a quick compile, or a full on clean compile) and then spin up an instance of Tomcat.

So where does the intellij concept of artifact come in for my process. Can it help make my development process faster?

Answer 1

Sure it can, please see the related blog posts: one and two.

Answer 2

From https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/help/artifact.html

To conclude, the artifacts let you combine your compiled source code, associated libraries, metadata and resources (text, images and so on) in deployable units. They may include compilation results for more than one module as well as facet resources such as deployment descriptors and other configuration files. In addition, artifacts can include other artifacts.