Meaning of "SNAPSHOT" version in Maven pom.xml [duplicate]

Question

While working on multiple projects I come cross a lot of cases in which the version number has a -SNAPSHOT suffix. For example

<version>1.0.0-SNAPSHOT</version>

Why is this naming used? Couldn't people just use a different version number? What exactly hides behind the meaning of the snapshot suffix?

Thanks!

Answer 1

A snapshot version is a version that is currently under development and not production-ready.

It is also a guideline that you shouldn't use this version in your application, since its API is not guaranteed to be stable.

Answer 2

SNAPSHOT means latest version that hasn't been released yet, usually a version in development.