How do I tell Maven to use the latest version of a dependency?

To tell Maven to use the latest version of a dependency, you can use the [RELEASE] or [LATEST] version range in the <version> element of the dependency in your pom.xml file.

For example, to specify that Maven should use the latest release version of the commons-lang library, you can use the following dependency declaration:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
  <artifactId>commons-lang3</artifactId>
  <version>[3.0,)</version>
</dependency>

This will tell Maven to use the latest version of commons-lang3 that is greater than or equal to 3.0.

You can also use the [LATEST] version range to tell Maven to use the latest version of the dependency, regardless of whether it is a release version or a snapshot version.

For example, to specify that Maven should use the latest version of the commons-lang library, including snapshot versions, you can use the following dependency declaration:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
  <artifactId>commons-lang3</artifactId>
  <version>[LATEST]</version>
</dependency>

Note that using the [RELEASE] or [LATEST] version range can make your build less predictable, because