Cannot search for artifact in Eclipse Kepler using m2e plugin

Windows > Preferences > Maven and check "Download repository index updates on startup".

Restart and you're all fixed.

Very strange but now it worked using the following way:

1. Add some dependency directly in the pom.xml
2. Save the pom.xml to trigger the change. Now the library added directly appears in the project.
3. Now I also got messages in the status bar like "indexing... " and "searching repository"
4. I am now able to add an dependency using the method from the question. It now retrieves a list of artifacts of which I can choose.

Maybe a bug as also the add dialog should trigger the first repository search/indexing.

The information: "Artifact Id cannot be empty" still appears and had nothing to do with the problem.

I had similar situation and by googling for a while i found out that this is most likely because your central Repository index might never have been updated. For this what you can do is

1. Go to Window > Show View > Other > type Maven in filter and select Maven Repositories.
2. In Maven Repositories tab Expand Global Repositories, Right-click on central and Update Index.

also you can set up index to update on eclipse startup Windows > Preferences > Maven and check "Download repository index updates on startup".

Hope this helps some one else.