How to make maven use the latest release version within version range?

Question

In my maven project I use dependencies like this:

    org.apache.httpcomponents
    httpc         


        

Answer 1

Maven 3 supports versioning for alpha, beta and snapshots as well with the following order alpha < beta < snapshot

Answer 2

Looking at the documentation for Maven range selections, I notice the comment:

Resolution of dependency ranges should not resolve to a snapshot (development version) unless it is included as an explicit boundary.

Unless the artifact version ends with -SNAPSHOT, Maven is going to consider it a valid release build. As far as I know, -alpha1 has no special meaning to Maven. It's just another random qualifier.

I would strongly recommend you forgo the version range, anyway. Predictable builds should be the goal of any stable project and version ranges fly in the face of that.