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Apache Maven

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Velocity6.3

Build automation and dependency management tool for Java projects

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Maven 4 is one RC from GA — and 3.10 is being rebuilt to meet it halfway

build-toolingmigrationrelease-candidatebreaking-changesjava
◆Current state
Maven 4 has been in release-candidate territory for over a year, with rc-6 closing out every known issue reported against rc-5. The project's answer to the migration problem is mvnup, a first-party tool that rewrites pom.xml files into Maven 4-compatible shape. Alongside it, a 3.10 line has appeared that pulls Maven 4's classpath ordering and resolver behaviour back into the 3.x branch.
◆Where it's heading
The two-branch strategy is the story: rather than force a hard cutover, Maven is narrowing the gap from both directions — Maven 4 relaxes nothing, but 3.10 adopts its semantics and strips deprecated super-POM defaults so projects arrive at 4.0 already aligned. Expect the remaining RC cycles to be about migration friction rather than features.
◆Prediction
The next release is likely Maven 4.0.0 GA or a final rc-7, with 3.10.0 shipping shortly after as the recommended stepping stone.

◆Recent moves

  1. 19d ago

    Maven 4.0.0-rc-6

    rc-6 clears the full backlog of issues raised against rc-5 — the cached field-accessibility bug, a ConcurrentModificationException in the v4 API, and BOM packaging in consumer POMs. It reads as the cleanup pass a project does when it intends the next tag to be GA.

    View source ↗
  2. 1mo ago

    Maven 3.10 drops super-POM defaults to align with Maven 4

    ⚡ SPARK

    The 3.10 line stops being a maintenance branch and becomes a migration bridge: it removes the release-profile and deprecated plugin management from the super POM and adopts Maven 4's classpath ordering and Resolver 2.0.19 behaviour.

    View source ↗
  3. 3mo ago

    archive/backport-12089-to-4.0.x: Fix #12087: add surefire and failsafe plugins to PluginUpgradeStrategy

    A backport branch tag, not a release: it pins minimum surefire and failsafe versions inside mvnup so the upgrade tool stops producing builds that break against Maven 4. Housekeeping in service of the 4.x migration path rather than a change users choose.

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  4. 9mo ago

    4.0.0-rc-5

    rc-5 is notable mainly for what it disclosed: a globally cached field-accessibility state in the bean configuration system that broke plugin configuration injection, particularly in plugin unit tests. The fix landed in rc-6.

    View source ↗
  5. 1y ago

    Maven ships mvnup, a first-party pom.xml upgrade tool

    ⚡ SPARK

    rc-4 introduced mvnup, the Maven Upgrade Tool, which rewrites pom.xml files into a Maven 4-compatible form. It also restored DI beans in build extensions and added a legacy mode — all of it aimed at reducing what a project has to change by hand.

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