I'm new to list list so I apologize if this has been beaten to death before, but I'd like to propose a change to the version conflict resolution strategy that Maven uses. It's a combination of the current "nearest version" strategy and a "highest version" strategy. There are two cases:
1. When an artifact has a declared dependency, the declared version always takes precedence over any inherited version. 2. When a project inherits two versions of the same dependency, the highest-numbered version takes precedence. Rule 1 is consistent with the "nearest" strategy. It is necessary to give developers adequate control over the dependencies they use, and also because it would be very confusing for Maven to use an artifact version other than the one declared in the pom.xml file. I believe this rule preserves all the desirable features of the "nearest" strategy. Rule 2 is consistent with a "highest" strategy, and it addresses the problem of unrelated artifacts overriding each other's dependencies. Suppose artifact A depends on B and C, both of which depend on different versions of D (and A does not depend directly on D). Obviously either B or C will be forced for use a version of D for which it was not designed, but if the developer of D has made some attempt to preserve compatibility across versions, the higher-numbered version of D is far more likely to work with both B and C and the lower-numbered version. I think this would be a big improvement over the somewhat arbitrary decision that the "nearest" strategy would make. --jw --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
