Ruleset for versions-maven-plugin

Ref: https://www.mojohaus.org/versions-maven-plugin/version-rules.html

For all applications, we should periodically check for new versions of third party libraries.

This can be automated like this:

mvn versions:update-properties versions:update-parent

The first goal replaces the values of the version properties inside pom.xml, for all dependencies. The second goal updates the parent version.

NOTE: Take care if the update results in a new major version, especially for parent!

However, the versions plugin will find all new versions, including alphas, betas, milestones, candidate releases and so on.

To avoid manual inspection and filtering every time a repository is updated, we can instead use a ruleset which excludes versions based on regular expressions.

The ruleset is an xml file. It must be available via URL or classpath. It is placed in this repository, and so it can be pointed to directly at its repository location (main branch) or it can be depended on as a normal dependency.

Usage

In the top pom for an app, add a URL pointer to the ruleset like this:

<plugin>
    <!-- Exclude non-release versions when running mvn versions:property-updates-report && mvn versions:update-properties -->
    <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
    <artifactId>versions-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>${versions-maven-plugin.version}</version>
    <configuration>
        <rulesUri>https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dsb-norge/maven-versions-dsb-ruleset/main/ruleset.xml</rulesUri>
    </configuration>
</plugin>