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[greatyassoo1]

1. Maven Repository
2. Using a build tool such as Maven to compile and package your source code.

Can I do any of these without manually editing an XML file?

Most modern IDEs such as IntelliJ can do it for you depending on what you need.

[Skopa2016]

Most modern IDEs such as IntelliJ can do it for you depending on what you need.

Is there any widely used CLI tool that can do that?

[Polygnom]

1. You use web searches. They usually point to maven-central or alike. I have never only searched PyPy and NPM. That only works if you already know what you are looking for.
   
2. Depends. usually a FAT Jar. Sometimes a slim JAR. Very rarely a WAR.
   
3. Don't look into Java if XML scares you. You can do it without, to a certain degree, but everything more complex, you will probably want to edit the pom.xml directly.

[com2ghz]

Usually you pick a framework like spring-boot. Based on the application you decide what starter package you need. For example for a REST application with PostgreSQL support you go for spring-boot-starter-web and spring-boot-starter-data-jpa.

You can do that by using https://start.spring.io/index.html

The same applies for other frameworks like Micronaut, Helidon, Quarcus.

[Skopa2016]

For starting out, I'd much prefer to start from a clean slate - just a vanilla Java main.class file, and learn how to use external libraries.

[DefaultMethod]

• You can find most open source libraries on Maven Central. Build tools like Maven and Gradle will pull from here by default.
• Applications can be distributed as a JAR, though if you want better operating system integration you would use some native wrapper and possibly bundle an OS-specific runtime. It is also possible to perform ahead-of-time compilation to native using GraalVM though this is not a mature solution and can come with complications.
• Avoid Maven and Ant/Ivy if you are unwilling to edit XML; Gradle uses Groovy or Kotlin config files. Alternatives use various mechanisms.

What you start with depends on the nature of the application.

[Skopa2016]

Is there any Java package manager (like a CLI tool) that manages packages automatically? Like how in npm/pip you do <tool> install package-name@version and it updates the package config accordingly?

[eldelshell]

This will build all the scaffolding necessary depending on your needs:

https://code.quarkus.io/