Think branched development. Something that causes that versions are not released in "single thread in increasing manner", not in same "timeline" you would expect but rather jumping from "here" (1,x) and "there" (2.x) as teams progresses:
1.0 1.1 2.0 2.0.1 1.1.1 etc. If you would use SNAPSHOT only (without prefixed wannabe release version number), which -- probably CI built and deployed -- "snapshot" would you end up? What do you expect to have returned by "LATEST"? a) last deployed? -- it's 1.1.1 b) "biggest version"? -- it's not always doable because of "marketing versions" used (think -alpha, -RC, -RC-alpha, -this-is-a-special-release-of-pre-alpha-RC-0 etc). Thanks, ~t~ On Mon, Apr 4, 2011 at 3:12 PM, Aaron Kaplan <[email protected]>wrote: > What's the rationale behind the convention of including the next release > number in the snapshot version identifier? That is, why do we call a > snapshot 1.4-SNAPSHOT rather than just SNAPSHOT? > > When I specify a version of a dependency, there are two possibilities: if > it's a library that I'm not in the process of modifying, I want to use a > particular, reproducible release version; if I am currently working on it, I > want to use the latest snapshot. The numbered snapshot convention allows for > these two, but also a third possibility: if version 1.3 has been released > and the latest snapshot is 1.4-SNAPSHOT, but my pom still has a dependency > on 1.3-SNAPSHOT, then I depend on neither a reproducible release version nor > the latest snapshot, but something very arbitrary: the last snapshot that > got compiled before the 1.3 release. Is that ever useful? In my experience > it only happens by accident, and it causes confusion. > > The special version LATEST would do more or less what I want, but as I > understand it this functionality has been removed in maven 3. If someone can > point me to an explanation of the reason for that change, I'd appreciate it. > > -Aaron > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] > For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] > >
