Introduced new VersionFilter hook for the dependency collection process that allows clients to control which of the available versions matching a range should be considered for the dependency graph, ContextualSnapshotVersionFilter provides an interesting showcase of the new extension point.

Bug 405117 - Ease specification of version range bounds that match the least/greatest version in a given branch

Made GenericVersionScheme recognize ranges like "[M.N.*]" as syntactic sugar for "[M.N.min,M.N.max]"

Bug 405117 - Ease specification of version range bounds that match the least/greatest version in a given branch

Revised special tokens to just "min"/"max" to ease usage, especially in XML files

Bug 405117 - Ease specification of version range bounds that match the least/greatest version in a given branch

Introduced support for trailing "<min>" and "<max>" tokens in versions to denote the minimum/maximum of a version segment

Introduced DependencyCollectionContext.getArtifact()

Fixed lifecycle mapping metadata for m2e which previously resulted in spurious errors regarding the manifests

Bug 400992 - Allow local repository managers to query configuration properties during their creation

Fixed javadoc links

Added new config option to allow host app to override filename

Bug 400992 - Allow local repository managers to query configuration properties during their creation

Extended relevant factory methods to require a session object like pretty much everything else already does

Bug 400400 - Rework recording of pre-managed dependency attributes to reduce heap consumption for average case

Replaced DependencyNode.getPremanaged*() with getManagedBits() and made recording of pre-managed state optional which is now implemented via node custom data and utility methods in DependencyManagerUtils if the correspondig config property has been enabled

from _maven.repositories to _remote.repositories, with javadoc
enhancements

Made ConflictResolver derive optional flag from parent nodes and introduced OptionalitySelector hook to control resolution of conflicts among derived flags, with SimpleOptionalitySelector providing a reasonable default impl

used only for resolution tracking

o put tracking filename in TRACKING_FILENAME constant

Extended DependencyManagement to support control of optional flag and enhanced DefaultDependencyCollector and ClassicDependencyManager to make use of it. As a prerequisite, converted optional flag of Dependency from boolean to Boolean to support three-valued logic when inspecting managed dependencies.