Meaning of "SNAPSHOT" version in Maven pom.xml

Question

While working on multiple projects I come cross a lot of cases in which the version number has a -SNAPSHOT suffix. For example

<version>1.0.0-SNAPSHOT</version>

Why is this naming used? Couldn't people just use a different version number? What exactly hides behind the meaning of the snapshot suffix?

Thanks!

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5901378/what-exactly-is-a-maven-snapshot-and-why-do-we-need-it — Guy Bouallet, Feb 12 '14 at 18:33

score 12 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 12 '14 at 18:32

12

A snapshot version is a version that is currently under development and not production-ready.

It is also a guideline that you shouldn't use this version in your application, since its API is not guaranteed to be stable.

answered Feb 12 '14 at 18:32

Kurt Du Bois

2

Content of a -SNAPSHOT artifact is also considered mutable - i.e. maven will check periodically if there isn't a more recent .jar with the same version. Non -SNAPSHOT versions are considered immutable (i.e. if we have cached foo-1.2.3 already, it's never checked again) – ptyx Feb 12 '14 at 18:53

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 12 '14 at 18:31

4

SNAPSHOT means latest version that hasn't been released yet, usually a version in development.

answered Feb 12 '14 at 18:31

Michiel Borkent

2 Answers2