Three Dimensions of a Dependency Version

Three Dimensions of a Dependency Version.md

There are at least three natural dimensions to the modern maven dependency version. Dependency resolution version specifiers should incorporate all three dimensions. As of v7.5.1 Gradle has no mechanism to specify all three dimmensions simultaneously. You can do SemVer Range or latest.release vs latest.integration but not all three at the same time. https://docs.gradle.org/current/userguide/single_versions.html

Proposal: Allow use of all three dimensions simultaneously.

1. SemVer Range eg

   • 2.15.0
   • [2.15.0, 2.15.50[
   • [2.15,2.16[
   • [2,3[
   • [2,[

2. any or latest

3. status eg integration or release

Examples:

• [2,3[:latest.release
  • latest 2.x.x release only
• [2,3[:latest.integration
  • latest 2.x.x snapshot or release
  • supposedly this is the existing behavior of prefix version range in Gradle 7.5.1, but the doumentation is unclear
• [2,3[:any.release
  • any 2.x.x release that is brought in transitively from another dependency
• [2,3[:any.integration
  • any 2.x.x snapshot or release that is brought in transitively from another dependency
  • this is effectively the existing behavior of Maven-style version ranges in Gradle 7.5.1

See also:

https://ant.apache.org/ivy/history/latest-milestone/settings/version-matchers.html