Replace dependency version for <version>RELEASE</version> dependency.

I 'm using RELEASE version for some dependencies in my current project.

Imagine a simple scenario where i have project A who depends on project B...,

A's pom.xml states:

...
<dependency>
<artifactId>b</artifactId>
<groupId>ar.com.b</groupId>
<version>RELEASE</version>
</dependency>
...

When running "mvn compile" to A, there maven knows which is B's last released version so that it can compile against certain specific code at that time, imagine it is 1.2.0.

So why when I run "mvn release:prepare" A's tagged (released, svn cp) pom.xml doesn't replace <version>RELEASE</version> with <version>1.2.0</version> ?

Why do i think it should?

• So that A's released version will always work the same as that day I performed A's release
• So that A's released version won't get hurted by possible non-backward-compatible changes on future B's releases

I 've read at the Maven Definitive Guide e-book that use of <version>RELEASE</version> is not encouraged, but i seemed helpful for me until this point where I find this quite dissapointing.

Please feel free to share thoughts may be I got confused with this but i think this is a problem that worth to be solved.