Maven and snapshots?

Question

I'm working on a rapid project, of which, I'm directly working on a module that is continuously changing. Others have a direct dependency on the module, and as such, I stubbed out the public interface and deployed it to our local Nexus repository as 0.0-SNAPSHOT for use.

Now that I've almost completed my first iteration of the module, I've attempted to redeploy the updated artifact. Reading about snapshots, others claim that a snapshot should represent the current head trunk. Is this true?

Maven automatically increments my snapshot version upon redeploy - so, going from 0.0-SNAPSHOT, I'm still at 0.0-SNAPSHOT, only, it's iteration 3 or 4 of the same snapshot. When should I roll over to 0.1-SNAPSHOT? Is there a plugin I can use to automate the version change, instead of manually editing my pom?

After integration testing and the deployment of our first system release, 1.0-RELEASE, how should my module progress? Should I move my module to 1.0-SNAPSHOT and continue thereon? Is there a methodology one should follow, or is it left to the discretion of the developer?

Answer 1

The X.Y.Z-SNAPSHOT notation identifies temporary versions leading up to release X.Y.Z, so you usually do not move from X.Y.Z-SNAPSHOT to X.Y.Z+1-SNAPSHOT unless you release X.Y.Z. If you adhere to this convention the maven-release-plugin may help you with the full release process.

Note that the most common Maven convention uses 3-number release identifiers without any suffix (i.e. no -RELEASE). Suffixes are usually used to distinguish variants of the same release.

Maven is all about conventions, so there's little chance you'll go very far without reading about it: This book is a good starting point.