Maven Version Ranges - Summary

[adrian.brock]

See other threads for details and to make comments:

DEPENDENCIES
http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=132677

The version ranges do actually work as they are supposed to, so
if there weren't other problems then I'd suggest we use them.

VERSION FORMAT
http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=132665

To make it work we need to use the Maven version format,
i.e. 1.2.3-qualifier-1
We should also use lower case qualifiers to avoid confusion
http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=132674

RELEASE PLUGIN
http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=132666

We also need to use 2.0-beta-7 for the release process to work at all,
but there's something broken at repository.jboss.org
http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=132668

GENERATE RELEASE POMS
http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=132667

I think we should do this anyway

SNAPSHOTS
http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=132666

Snapshots in the local repository break things during the release process,
so you have to zap them before starting. But purge-local-repository
doesn't work if you use version ranges.

Older snapshots also cause problems during development
http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=132669
why do we keep all snapshots anyway?
A method to purge snapshots from snapshots.jboss.org would solve this problem.

There's also known bugs related to snapshots (pretty much what I describe above)
see the first link.

SUMMARY

Provided that we have;
* reliable mechanisms to get rid of snapshots from both the local repository and snapshots.jboss.org
* a change to use Maven's version scheme
* figure out the problem at repository.jboss.org with the release plugin

then version ranges would be a more deterministic mechanism for managing
dependencies than the "nightmare" we have now.