What the new user is missing is that the concept "up-to-date" is
overloaded and means very different things depending on whether it is
applied to a snapshot or to a release.

To make a long story short: if a released package needed repair then
the repaired version needed a new version number.  This is well known
to be good practice since long before Maven came along, even though we
all know of cases where someone got away with ignoring it.  The
correct response, upon noticing that two package release copies of equal
version number differ, is not "I'd better update" but "this is WRONG,
sound the alarm!"

The -help blurb could perhaps be improved by distinguishing between
"updated snapshot" and "higher release version" to show that the
concepts are different.  It would at least prompt some of us to
wonder, "what's different about these," and maybe go find out.

As a newbie myself, I often find that the Maven documentation assumes
far too much knowledge of the celebrated conventions and contains too
few pointers to them for the uninitiated.  That's why I bought the
book.  Yes, I will try to remember to report specific cases when I see
them.

-- 
Mark H. Wood, Lead System Programmer   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Typically when a software vendor says that a product is "intuitive" he
means the exact opposite.

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