2) As you mentioned, this is in fact a dumb linear search. But
luckily
it is a consistently dumb linear search :) It will always follow the
order in which the repos are specified in your settings.xml. No issue
of non-reproducibility.
Except the case where you are working on multiple projects and another
project that does not depend on the jboss repo pulls in an artifact
into your local repo from central first :(