Replacing -SNAPSHOT versions with their corresponding releases

If you need a new feature that is being developed in a dependency of your project, and that feature has not been released yet, you may decide to add a dependency on the -SNAPSHOT version of the next release:

<dependencies>

  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.codehaus.cargo</groupId>
    <artifactId>cargo-core-api</artifactId>
    <version>1.0-alpha-7-SNAPSHOT</version>
  </dependency>

</dependencies>

At some stage, this -SNAPSHOT version will be released. The use-releases goal, will look at all your project dependencies and see what -SNAPSHOT versions have been released. If any of your projects -SNAPSHOT versions have a corresponding release version, then it will replace the -SNAPSHOT with its corresponding release version.

mvn versions:use-releases

When org.codehaus.cargo:cargo-core-api releases the 1.0-alpha-7 version this would update the pom to look like:

<dependencies>

  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.codehaus.cargo</groupId>
    <artifactId>cargo-core-api</artifactId>
    <version>1.0-alpha-7</version>
  </dependency>
   
</dependencies>

You can restrict which dependencies should be processed. For example, the following will only match dependencies that match the groupId “org.codehaus.plexus” and artifactId “plexus-utils”

mvn versions:use-releases -Dincludes=org.codehaus.plexus:plexus-utils

The includes and excludes parameters follow the format groupId:artifactId:type:classifier. Use a comma separated separated list to specify multiple includes. Wildcards (*) can also be used to match multiple values.

This example will match anything with the groupId “org.codehaus.plexus” and anything with the groupId and artifactId matching “junit”.

mvn versions:use-releases -Dincludes=org.codehaus.plexus:*,junit:junit

By default, both the project/dependencyManagment and project/dependencies sections will be processed. You can use the processDependencies and processDependencyManagement parameters to control which sections are processed.

This example will only process the project/dependencyManagment section of your pom:

mvn versions:use-releases -DprocessDependencies=false

While this example will only process the project/dependencies section of your pom:

mvn versions:use-releases -DprocessDependencyManagement=false