Lex colimits (Q456823)

The paper develops a theory of finitely complete categories with colimits of special type and of ``exactness conditions'' relating finite limits and specified colimits. The notion can be understood as a form of cocompleteness in the \(2\)-category of finitely complete catgories and finite-limit-preserving functors. The notion generalizes finitely presentable categories, regular categories, Barr-exact categories, lextensive categories, coherent categories and adhesive categories. These examples are particular instances of a given general notion. An embedding of these small categories into small-exact categories is described. Finally, a relative completion in general theory is given.