How do I tell Maven to use the latest version of a dependency?

NOTE:

The mentioned LATEST and RELEASE metaversions have been dropped for plugin dependencies in Maven 3 "for the sake of reproducible builds", over 6 years ago. (They still work perfectly fine for regular dependencies.) For plugin dependencies please refer to this Maven 3 compliant solution.

If you always want to use the newest version, Maven has two keywords you can use as an alternative to version ranges. You should use these options with care as you are no longer in control of the plugins/dependencies you are using.

When you depend on a plugin or a dependency, you can use the a version value of LATEST or RELEASE. LATEST refers to the latest released or snapshot version of a particular artifact, the most recently deployed artifact in a particular repository. RELEASE refers to the last non-snapshot release in the repository. In general, it is not a best practice to design software which depends on a non-specific version of an artifact. If you are developing software, you might want to use RELEASE or LATEST as a convenience so that you don't have to update version numbers when a new release of a third-party library is released. When you release software, you should always make sure that your project depends on specific versions to reduce the chances of your build or your project being affected by a software release not under your control. Use LATEST and RELEASE with caution, if at all.

See the POM Syntax section of the Maven book for more details. Or see this doc on Dependency Version Ranges, where:

  • A square bracket ( [ & ] ) means "closed" (inclusive).
  • A parenthesis ( ( & ) ) means "open" (exclusive).

Here's an example illustrating the various options. In the Maven repository, com.foo:my-foo has the following metadata:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><metadata>
  <groupId>com.foo</groupId>
  <artifactId>my-foo</artifactId>
  <version>2.0.0</version>
  <versioning>
    <release>1.1.1</release>
    <versions>
      <version>1.0</version>
      <version>1.0.1</version>
      <version>1.1</version>
      <version>1.1.1</version>
      <version>2.0.0</version>
    </versions>
    <lastUpdated>20090722140000</lastUpdated>
  </versioning>
</metadata>

If a dependency on that artifact is required, you have the following options (other version ranges can be specified of course, just showing the relevant ones here):

Declare an exact version (will always resolve to 1.0.1):

<version>[1.0.1]</version>

Declare an explicit version (will always resolve to 1.0.1 unless a collision occurs, when Maven will select a matching version):

<version>1.0.1</version>

Declare a version range for all 1.x (will currently resolve to 1.1.1):

<version>[1.0.0,2.0.0)</version>

Declare an open-ended version range (will resolve to 2.0.0):

<version>[1.0.0,)</version>

Declare the version as LATEST (will resolve to 2.0.0) (removed from maven 3.x)

<version>LATEST</version>

Declare the version as RELEASE (will resolve to 1.1.1) (removed from maven 3.x):

<version>RELEASE</version>

Note that by default your own deployments will update the "latest" entry in the Maven metadata, but to update the "release" entry, you need to activate the "release-profile" from the Maven super POM. You can do this with either "-Prelease-profile" or "-DperformRelease=true"

It's worth emphasising that any approach that allows Maven to pick the dependency versions (LATEST, RELEASE, and version ranges) can leave you open to build time issues, as later versions can have different behaviour (for example the dependency plugin has previously switched a default value from true to false, with confusing results).

It is therefore generally a good idea to define exact versions in releases. As Tim's answer points out, the maven-versions-plugin is a handy tool for updating dependency versions, particularly the versions:use-latest-versions and versions:use-latest-releases goals.


Now I know this topic is old, but reading the question and the OP supplied answer it seems the Maven Versions Plugin might have actually been a better answer to his question:

In particular the following goals could be of use:

  • versions:use-latest-versions searches the pom for all versions which have been a newer version and replaces them with the latest version.
  • versions:use-latest-releases searches the pom for all non-SNAPSHOT versions which have been a newer release and replaces them with the latest release version.
  • versions:update-properties updates properties defined in a project so that they correspond to the latest available version of specific dependencies. This can be useful if a suite of dependencies must all be locked to one version.

The following other goals are also provided:

  • versions:display-dependency-updates scans a project's dependencies and produces a report of those dependencies which have newer versions available.
  • versions:display-plugin-updates scans a project's plugins and produces a report of those plugins which have newer versions available.
  • versions:update-parent updates the parent section of a project so that it references the newest available version. For example, if you use a corporate root POM, this goal can be helpful if you need to ensure you are using the latest version of the corporate root POM.
  • versions:update-child-modules updates the parent section of the child modules of a project so the version matches the version of the current project. For example, if you have an aggregator pom that is also the parent for the projects that it aggregates and the children and parent versions get out of sync, this mojo can help fix the versions of the child modules. (Note you may need to invoke Maven with the -N option in order to run this goal if your project is broken so badly that it cannot build because of the version mis-match).
  • versions:lock-snapshots searches the pom for all -SNAPSHOT versions and replaces them with the current timestamp version of that -SNAPSHOT, e.g. -20090327.172306-4
  • versions:unlock-snapshots searches the pom for all timestamp locked snapshot versions and replaces them with -SNAPSHOT.
  • versions:resolve-ranges finds dependencies using version ranges and resolves the range to the specific version being used.
  • versions:use-releases searches the pom for all -SNAPSHOT versions which have been released and replaces them with the corresponding release version.
  • versions:use-next-releases searches the pom for all non-SNAPSHOT versions which have been a newer release and replaces them with the next release version.
  • versions:use-next-versions searches the pom for all versions which have been a newer version and replaces them with the next version.
  • versions:commit removes the pom.xml.versionsBackup files. Forms one half of the built-in "Poor Man's SCM".
  • versions:revert restores the pom.xml files from the pom.xml.versionsBackup files. Forms one half of the built-in "Poor Man's SCM".

Just thought I'd include it for any future reference.


Please take a look at this page (section "Dependency Version Ranges"). What you might want to do is something like 

<version>[1.2.3,)</version>

These version ranges are implemented in Maven2.

Tags:

Java

Maven

Dependencies

Maven 2

Maven Metadata

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