Maven update dependencies in POM

Question

Are there any preexisting Maven plugins or commands to update the dependencies in the POM? Example: (if this was in my POM)

<dependency>
    <groupId>commons-lang</groupId>
    <artifactId>commons-lang</artifactId>
    <version>2.3</version>
</dependency>

Is there a command or plugin I can run to get it to update the dependency to:

<dependency>
    <groupId>commons-lang</groupId>
    <artifactId>commons-lang</artifactId>
    <version>2.4</version>
</dependency>

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

No there is isn't. And be happy there is not. How would such a tool know how to upgrade your dependencies?

With breakages possibly happening between minor versions, it would be a disaster waiting to happen.

---

But you can always write your own Mojo for that.

• get latest version of dependency from Maven repository
• compare with version from pom.xml
• rewrite pom.xml
• run mvn test
• ?
• Profit!

Answer 2

you can use dependencyManagement in your parent pom:

<dependencyManagement>
      <dependencies>
          <dependency>
              <groupId>commons-lang</groupId>
              <artifactId>commons-lang</artifactId>
              <version>2.4</version>
          </dependency>
      </dependencies>
</dependencyManagement>

this way, you need to change the version only once in the parent POM

Answer 3

Try the maven-versions-plugin, in particular, the versions:use-latest-versions goal.