Chapter 1. Obtaining Hibernate

The Hibernate team provides release bundles hosted on the SourceForge File Release System, in ZIP and TGZ formats. Each release bundle containsJARs, documentation, source code, and other goodness.

You can download releases of Hibernate, in your chosen format, from the list at http://sourceforge.net/projects/hibernate/files/hibernate4/.

The lib/required/ directory contains all the JARs Hibernate requires. All the jars in this directory must also be included in your project's classpath.
The /lib/jpa/ directory contains the hibernate-entitymanager jar and its dependencies beyond those in lib/required/. This defines Hibernate support for JPA.
The lib/envers directory contains the hibernate-envers jar and its dependencies beyond those in lib/required/
The lib/optional directory contains the jars needed for optional features of Hibernate.

1.2. Maven Repository Artifacts

Note

The authoritative repository for Hibernate artifacts is the JBoss Maven repository. The team responsible for the JBoss Maven repository maintains a number of Wiki pages that contain important information.

Maven Repository Wiki Pages

http://community.jboss.org/docs/DOC-14900 - General information about the repository.
http://community.jboss.org/docs/DOC-15170 - Information about setting up the JBoss repositories in order to do development work on JBoss projects themselves.
http://community.jboss.org/docs/DOC-15169 - Information about setting up access to the repository to use JBoss projects as part of your own software.

Hibernate produces a number of artifacts (all under the org.hibernate groupId):

Hibernate Artifacts under groupId org.hibernate

hibernate-core

The main artifact, needed to build applications using the native Hibernate APIs including defining metadata in both annotations as well as Hibernate's own hbm.xml format.

hibernate-entitymanager

Represents Hibernate's implementation of JPA, as specified at http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=317.

This artifact depends on hibernate-core

hibernate-envers

An optional module that provides historical auditing of changes to your entities.

This artifact depends on both hibernate-core and hibernate-entitymanager.

hibernate-c3p0

Provides integration between Hibernate and the C3P0 connection pool library. See http://sourceforge.net/projects/c3p0/ for information about C3P0.

This artifact depends on hibernate-core, but is generally included in a project as a runtime dependency. It pulls in the C3P0 dependencies automatically.

hibernate-proxool

Provides integration between Hibernate and the Proxool connection pool library. See http://proxool.sourceforge.net/ for more information about this library.

This artifact depends on hibernate-core, but is generally included in a project as a runtime dependency. It pulls in the Proxool dependencies automatically..

hibernate-ehcache

Privides integration between Hibernate and EhCache, as a second-level cache. See http://ehcache.sourceforge.net/ for more information aboutEhCache.

This artifact depends on hibernate-core, but is generally included in a project as a runtime dependency. It pulls in the Ehcache dependencies automatically.

hibernate-infinispan

Provides integration between Hibernate and Infinispan, as a second-level cache. See http://jboss.org/infinispan for more information about Infinispan.

This artifact depends on hibernate-core, but is generally included in a project as a runtime dependency. It pulls in the Infinispan dependencies automatically.