Checking for new dependency updates

The display-dependency-updates goal will check all the dependencies used in your project and display a list of those dependencies with newer versions available.

Here are some examples of what this looks like:

svn checkout http://svn.codehaus.org/mojo/trunk/mojo/build-helper-maven-plugin build-helper-maven-plugin
cd build-helper-maven-plugin
mvn versions:display-dependency-updates

Which produces the following output:

[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building Build Helper Maven Plugin
[INFO]    task-segment: [versions:display-dependency-updates]
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] [versions:display-dependency-updates]
[INFO]
[INFO] The following dependency updates are available:
[INFO]   org.apache.maven:maven-artifact ........................ 2.0 -> 2.0.9
[INFO]   org.apache.maven:maven-plugin-api ...................... 2.0 -> 2.0.9
[INFO]   org.apache.maven:maven-project ....................... 2.0.2 -> 2.0.9
[INFO]   org.codehaus.plexus:plexus-utils ....................... 1.1 -> 1.5.6
[INFO]
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESSFUL
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 17 seconds
[INFO] Finished at: Fri Aug 15 10:46:03 IST 2008
[INFO] Final Memory: 10M/167M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ignore a specific version suffix in version updates

Let's suppose you wanted org.apache.maven.doxia:doxia-core: not to be updated to 2.0.0-M6 or org.apache.maven:maven-core to 4.0.0-alpha-5' or anything with a-Mor-alpha' in it. Upon first sight of the dependencyExcludes option, one might consider to use it to filter out anything with 2.*-M.* or *-alpha.*.

Well, that would be wrong. dependencyIncludes and dependencyExcludes work only on input dependencies, that is, dependency versions that are already being used by your project. This means that it is likely that you will still see the dreaded 2.0.0-M6-like version in the updates.

You can either use ruleSet or ignoredVersions. The former allows for a greater control where you can specify ignored version patterns per dependency whereas the latter is intended to be used from command line ans only offers simple version filters.

So, let's say we want to display dependency updates of this very plugin and while doing so, ignore all updates with an -M or -alpha at the end of the version string, simply use:

mvn org.codehaus.mojo:versions-maven-plugin:display-dependency-updates "-Dmaven.version.ignore=.*-M.*,.*-alpha.*"

or:

<configuration>
    ...
    <ignoredVersions>.*-M.*,.*-alpha.*</ignoredVersions>
    ...
</configuration>

in your project config. That will result in the following output. Instead of:

[INFO] --- versions:2.15.0:display-dependency-updates (default-cli) @ versions-maven-plugin ---
[INFO] The following dependencies in Dependency Management have newer versions:
[INFO]   dom4j:dom4j ................................. 1.6.1 -> 20040902.021138
[INFO]   org.apache.maven:maven-artifact ............... 3.2.5 -> 4.0.0-alpha-5
[INFO]   org.apache.maven:maven-compat ................. 3.2.5 -> 4.0.0-alpha-5
[INFO]   org.apache.maven:maven-core ................... 3.2.5 -> 4.0.0-alpha-5
[INFO]   org.apache.maven:maven-model .................. 3.2.5 -> 4.0.0-alpha-5
[INFO]   org.apache.maven:maven-plugin-api ............. 3.2.5 -> 4.0.0-alpha-5
[INFO]   org.apache.maven:maven-settings ............... 3.2.5 -> 4.0.0-alpha-5
[INFO]   org.apache.maven.enforcer:enforcer-api ................ 3.2.1 -> 3.3.0
[INFO]   org.apache.maven.plugin-testing:maven-plugin-testing-harness ...
[INFO]                                                   3.3.0 -> 4.0.0-alpha-1
[INFO]   org.apache.maven.plugin-tools:maven-plugin-annotations ...
[INFO]                                                           3.8.1 -> 3.8.2
[INFO]   org.mockito:mockito-inline ........................... 4.11.0 -> 5.2.0
[INFO]   org.slf4j:slf4j-simple ............................... 1.7.36 -> 2.0.7

you will only see:

[INFO] --- versions:2.15.0:display-dependency-updates (default-cli) @ versions-maven-plugin ---
[INFO] The following dependencies in Dependency Management have newer versions:
[INFO]   dom4j:dom4j ................................. 1.6.1 -> 20040902.021138
[INFO]   org.apache.maven:maven-artifact ....................... 3.2.5 -> 3.9.2
[INFO]   org.apache.maven:maven-compat ......................... 3.2.5 -> 3.9.2
[INFO]   org.apache.maven:maven-core ........................... 3.2.5 -> 3.9.2
[INFO]   org.apache.maven:maven-model .......................... 3.2.5 -> 3.9.2
[INFO]   org.apache.maven:maven-plugin-api ..................... 3.2.5 -> 3.9.2
[INFO]   org.apache.maven:maven-settings ....................... 3.2.5 -> 3.9.2
[INFO]   org.apache.maven.enforcer:enforcer-api ................ 3.2.1 -> 3.3.0
[INFO]   org.apache.maven.plugin-tools:maven-plugin-annotations ...
[INFO]                                                           3.8.1 -> 3.8.2
[INFO]   org.mockito:mockito-inline ........................... 4.11.0 -> 5.2.0
[INFO]   org.slf4j:slf4j-simple ............................... 1.7.36 -> 2.0.7