Archetype should always use latest version of dependency

Question

I made an archetype that has a managed dependency to one of my projects. Is there a possibility to tell the archetype to always use the latest release version of that dependency whenever a new project is created with my archetype? Using RELEASE doesn't work for me, since I don't want to change the version everytime the project is built.

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <groupId>${groupId}</groupId>
    <artifactId>${artifactId}</artifactId>
    <version>${version}</version>
    <packaging>jar</packaging>

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.mycompany.someproject</groupId>
            <artifactId>someDependency</artifactId>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>

    <dependencyManagement>
        <dependencies>
            <dependency>
                <groupId>com.mycompany.myproject</groupId>
                <artifactId>myArtifact</artifactId>

                <version>LATEST</version>
                <type>pom</type>
                <scope>import</scope>
            </dependency>
        </dependencies>
    </dependencyManagement>
</project>

I read this question, but the suggested solution with the maven-versions-plugin seems not to be suitable for two reasons. First, I want to change the version when I create the Project and second I don't want to change the versions of all the dependencies but only one.

Edit: above is the pom.xml from archetype-resources (updated), below is the pom.xml from my archetype-project itself.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <parent>
        <groupId>com.mycompany.maven.archetype.be</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-archetype-be-_moduleList</artifactId>
        <version>1.3-SNAPSHOT</version>
        <relativePath>../maven-archetype-be</relativePath>
    </parent>
    <artifactId>archetype-be-api</artifactId>
    <packaging>maven-archetype</packaging>
    <dependencies />
    <name>archetype-be-api</name>
</project>

EDIT2: RELEASEand LATEST seem not to work at all in managed dependencies. Can anyone confirm or disable that statement?

Answer 1

You can put

    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.mycompany.myproject</groupId>
        <artifactId>my-artifact</artifactId>
        <version>LATEST</version>
        <type>pom</type>
        <scope>import</scope>
    </dependency>

LATEST will resolve the latest available version and pass -U when you build

or if you don't want to specify -U each time you can configure your settings.xml in ~/.m2 something like

<settings xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/SETTINGS/1.0.0"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/SETTINGS/1.0.0
                      http://maven.apache.org/xsd/settings-1.0.0.xsd">
  ...
  <profiles>
    <profile>
      ...
      <repositories>
        <repository>
          <id>codehausSnapshots</id>
          <name>Codehaus Snapshots</name>
          <releases>
            <enabled>false</enabled>
            <updatePolicy>always</updatePolicy> // <-- this will update each release artifact from this repository each time
            <checksumPolicy>warn</checksumPolicy>
          </releases>
          <url>http://snapshots.maven.codehaus.org/maven2</url>
          <layout>default</layout>
        </repository>
      </repositories>
      <pluginRepositories>
        ...
      </pluginRepositories>
      ...
    </profile>
  </profiles>
  ...
</settings>

when you run the mvn to generate project from your archetype project you can still specify LATEST, for example

mvn archetype:generate 
    -DarchetypeGroupId=you_archetype_group_id 
    -DarchetypeArtifactId=sample-spring-mvc-archetype 
    -DarchetypeVersion=LATEST -DgroupId=new.project.id 
    -DartifactId=sample 
    -DarchetypeRepository=path_to_maven_repo_with_archetype_jar