Where is project timeline for Maven 3.1 available?

Question

One feature of Maven 3 I am eagerly awaiting is automatic parent versioning, that is, no longer needing to hardcode the parent version in every child pom.xml.

This feature is apparently coming in Maven 3.1, but when is Maven 3.1 coming? Ironically, if I search around the net, I find many references (examples here, here, and here) to how one of the top features in Maven 3.0 is the versionless parent element, except it's actually coming in Maven 3.1. And the only substantive mentions of Maven 3.1 that I've found are these same articles that are actually about 3.0.

Even a google query for 3.1 on maven.apache.org doesn't turn up anything useful.

Where's the go-to place for project plans and timelines for upcoming Apache project releases; how come the whole world knows about features in Maven 3.1 but I can't find a roadmap or timeline; does a schedule for Maven 3.1 exist?

Answer 1

The Maven project at Apache is using JIRA for tracking bugs and features - including the roadmaps. You can find the general link to the Maven JIRA in the menu on the left of the Maven web site main page.

Maven roadmaps overview: http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/MNG#selectedTab=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.project%3Aroadmap-panel

The Maven-3.1.0 roadmap: http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/MNG/fixforversion/18967
The Maven-3.1.x roadmap: http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/MNG/fixforversion/18129
The Maven-3.2 roadmap: http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/MNG/fixforversion/15565

The automatic parent versioning issue: http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/MNG-624
(Update: As of now, the new target release for this feature is v3.2)

You can see from the page there, that (effective now 2011-04-13) 88% of the items for v3.1 are still open and that 2% of the roadmap items are in progress and that 90% are not assigned. Given that, it makes not much sense yet to talk about a release date. But as bmargulies suggested in a comment above, if you ask on the developers mailing list, they might have a rough idea as to when the major drivers of the project plan to start to put their workforce on these roadmap items ... I can just guess, based on the fact that Sonatype plays an important role there and that they probably will be pretty much focused integrating their m2e/m2eclipse on the Eclipse release train (scheduled for release end of June) and on their investment into the Hudson project ... so my personal guess would be "probably not before Q4".