[FIXED] Is there a way to tell maven to always use the latest _stable_ version of a dependency?

Issue

How can I tell maven to always use the latest stable version of a dependency?

I know that I can depend on latest release version or just the latest version whatever that is from this question. I also know I can use the dependency plugin (also from that link).

However, I use google's guava library which seems to get an update every week. I find myself updating the version all the time. It's the google versioning system where it is more an incremental update than a big bang update and thus it is very unlikely that it will break anything especially given the nature of this library.

So I Would like to not have to keep changing the version identifier of my maven dependency. So I could do this:

    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.google.guava</groupId>
        <artifactId>guava</artifactId>
        <version>[12.0.1,)</version>
    </dependency>

Which would give me version 12.0.1 and later... and since I don't depend on any repos that are going to supply any snap shot versions of this dependency this will ensure I always have the latest release version.

However, it will also give me the "rc" versions as well (13.0-rc1 and 13.0-rc2). This is what I want to avoid.

Is it possible to make maven only depend on the stable release? i.e. that don't have any "rc" or "beta" or "alhpa" in their name and are just plain "13.0".

Solution

You can use RELEASE value in version element for your dependency to make Maven use the latest released version. However this is not the best practice, because it can break build reproduceability.

Also, Maven don't make logical differences between versions like 12.0.1 and 13.0-rc1. From Maven's point of view both of them are released versions and basically what you're trying to do is breaking Maven releases ideology in several ways.

So, instead of versioning artifacts like 13.0-rc1, you should do a regular releases and use special repositories and artifact promotion process as par of your release. So, you could have a release-candidates repository that can be used during testing and once test pass you'll promote those artifacts to a final release repository. But if you need to make changes, you'll just update released version, so 13.0, 13.0.1, etc...

Answered By - Eugene Kuleshov
Answer Checked By - Clifford M. (JavaFixing Volunteer)