How to make maven use the latest release version within version range?

Question

In my maven project I use dependencies like this:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.apache.httpcomponents</groupId>
    <artifactId>httpclient</artifactId>
    <version>[4.2.2, 5.0)</version>
</dependency>

Since the next major version (5.0) may change the API, I want my project to use the latest stable version available for branch 4.x.

This morning bug investigation told me this expression [4.2.2, 5.0) grabs any version available. In my case: 4.3-alpha1.

How to make maven use thelatest release version within version range?

Answer 1

Looking at the documentation for Maven range selections, I notice the comment:

Resolution of dependency ranges should not resolve to a snapshot (development version) unless it is included as an explicit boundary.

Unless the artifact version ends with -SNAPSHOT, Maven is going to consider it a valid release build. As far as I know, -alpha1 has no special meaning to Maven. It's just another random qualifier.

I would strongly recommend you forgo the version range, anyway. Predictable builds should be the goal of any stable project and version ranges fly in the face of that.

Answer 2

Maven 3 supports versioning for alpha, beta and snapshots as well with the following order alpha < beta < snapshot