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Date: Mon, 01 Feb 2010 12:57:58 +0100
From: Benjamin Bentmann <benjamin.bentmann@udo.edu>
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To: Maven Developers List <dev@maven.apache.org>
Subject: Re: Putting the archetype plugin version in the super POM
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Brett Porter wrote:

> I'm not that tied to the idea, it was just a thought to avoid the potential problem that had been raised by a user.

Please consider that such a version lockdown is twofold: It not only 
saves the user from potential regressions in newer versions but also 
excludes him from any bugfixes/improvements made in the newer plugin 
versions, unless you are willing to put the update instructions on each 
and every doc page out there that mentions the Archetype Plugin.

To give an example take the Maven Install Plugin. It's quite irritating 
to users that they do "mvn install:install-file" and next they observe 
Maven trying to download the POM for this artifact. This is due to 
generatePom defaulting to false in plugin version 2.2 and thanks to the 
version lock down in the super POM users have no easy way to use the 
fixed plugin version 2.3 other than giving the fully qualified goal.

For reproducible builds, version lockdowns make sense but doing so for 
CLI plugins IMHO gives evidence of other issues. To me, locking down the 
Archetype Plugin version translates to that we fear a new version brings 
more problems than benefits. The proper fix for this would be to 
increase the test coverage for the plugin.

The other related issue is RELEASE vs LATEST. When resolving a plugin 
version, Maven 2.x prefers LATEST over RELEASE, i.e. Maven 2.x 
potentially prefers a SNAPSHOT over a proper release. IIRC, it was an 
IRC discussion with Arnaud where we seemed to agree that this behavior 
is not really helpful to the majority of ordinary users. So this might 
be something to review for Maven 2.x as well.


Benjamin

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