Gradle - getting the latest release version of a dependency

It can be quite useful sometimes to get the latest release - if for example you release often your own dependencies.

You can get the latest version like

compile "junit:junit:+"

or better specify at least the major version like

compile "junit:junit:4.+"

Check out the Gradle-Versions-Plugin. It does exactly what you want: https://github.com/ben-manes/gradle-versions-plugin

For the installation, see the github page. Basically you need to add these two lines to your build.gradle - project file:

apply plugin: 'com.github.ben-manes.versions'

buildscript {
    [...]
    dependencies {
        classpath 'com.github.ben-manes:gradle-versions-plugin:0.8'
        [...]
    }
}
[...]

Then you can use the plugin, by running this command in terminal in your project dir:

./gradlew dependencyUpdates -Drevision=release

And it will show you which dependencies are outdated!

Gradle currently does not support Maven's RELEASE (which is rarely used and deprecated) but it does support Ivy's latest.release (and for snapshots latest.integration). However, the general recommendation is to build against exact versions. Otherwise, the build can become a lottery.