Thank you for the information - we will make appropriate adjustments to our approach.
I believe it would be helpful to make it more obvious in the documentation that "updatePolicy" for releases only refers to the artifact metadata, and release versions are "*never*" re-downloaded (which is VERY easy to understand). In their current form, the updatePolicy section in http://maven.apache.org/ref/3.0.4/maven-settings/settings.html and Maven help for the "-U" option can easily be interpreted to mean Maven is capable of updating release artifacts in the local cache. -----Original Message----- > From: Stephen Connolly [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Friday, January 18, 2013 3:35 AM > To: Maven Users List > Subject: Re: <updatePolicy>always</updatePolicy> not working for > <releases> with Maven 3.0.4 > > On Friday, 18 January 2013, Maven User <[email protected]> wrote: > > > We produce a large application from the artifacts of 15+ components, > > many which contain multiple modules. The version numbers are all the > > same, and a build cycle takes about four hours. > > > > Late in a development cycle we run numbered (i.e. non "-SNAPSHOT") > > builds in continuous integration mode. Doing so facilitates quicker > > turnaround times of last minute bugs. Once a package is actually > > delivered to QA we return to producing -SNAPSHOT artifacts. > > > > We are aware re-producing numbered artifacts is not a best practice. > > Part of the reason we felt like running a numbered build in CI mode > > would work is the "update policy" option which is available for > "releases." > > > At first you think that it is a great pity that, at the time, the same > object was reused for the "releases" as we'll as "snapshots" properties. > and you think that by rights the "snapshots" property should be a subtype > of the "releases" property as it just causes confusion on the half of > users... > > However what this actually refers to is the update policy *of the metadata > sourced from the release repository* > > Thus when you have a version range (which turn out to be a bad plan) an > update policy of always means it will re-check the metadata to see if there > are any new versions which might affect the range resolution. > > Release versions are *never* re-downloaded... But there are other files in > a release repo which do change (metadata) and that is what the policy > refers to > > HTH > > -Stephen > >
