> Clearly there is vague definition here if this symlink can point at a > release like this.
Yes, this is exactly the problem. Theoretical intention aside, all SNAPSHOT means in practice now is that if you depend on it, Maven will always check for something newer. What newer means is at the discretion of the person deploying the JAR. Maven no longer writes symlinks to the repository, so to clear up confusion, I think it's best to move them to cvs.apache.org/repository along with the timestamped builds. > > Some are concerned that removing these could cause some folks distros to > break. Though, no one in thier right mind should release against a SNAPSHOT. > I agree, and anyone that has made a source distro that uses SNAPSHOT is probably already broken because it will build against something different to what they released originally. (Sepcific timestamps, again, are different. The adoption of them in a release is also not a great practice, but at least makes it reproducible). Nobody is building against java-repository, they are using ibiblio, so there is no harm in cleaning these up AFAICT. By monitoring it going forward to make sure nothing goes in there, documenting it as policy, and probably adding support to Maven to enforce it, nothing should get to ibiblio either and we'll all be much happier :) - Brett
