What is the difference between Maven Dependencies and Referenced Libraries in Eclipse?

Question

In my maven eclipse project I see Maven dependency and Referenced Libraries. In some cases they have the same set of jars referring to M2_REPO. And in some they are entirely different. Leaves me confused as to why there are 2 different jar references in the same project.

Answer 1

Maven dependencies are added in pom file to a project. When you build the project, maven dependencies that you have added in pom file will be downloaded from the M2 repository.

Reference libraries are added manually for projects in Eclipse IDE.

When you leave confusing for those jar files, just add all libraries as maven dependencies.

Answer 2

Classes in both Referenced Libraries and Maven Dependencies are visible in Eclipse but Maven build can see only dependencies from pom. If you try to build the project with maven it may fail because of this