Language overview

A Range Resolver script is a flat list of statements. Each statement starts with a keyword and ends with a semicolon. There are no blocks, no variables and no expressions.

// Comments run to the end of the line.
repository https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/ as central;

import com.example:platform-bom:4.2.0;
allow unlocked /^com\.example:.*$/;

resolve highest org.slf4j:slf4j-api:[2.0.0,3.0.0) via central;

alias org.slf4j:slf4j-api as slf4j.version;

locked org.slf4j:slf4j-api:2.0.17;

Statement families

The statements fall into three groups.

Configuration

Statement	Purpose
repository	A Maven repository to query.
import	Inherit versions from another project’s published script.
allow	Patterns of imported artifacts you may re-resolve, or resolve as snapshots.
withhold	Patterns that are never re-resolved, even when an allow matches.
alias	Publish an artifact’s version under a different property name.

Requests

Requests are what you write by hand. Each one says which versions you are willing to accept.

Statement	Purpose
resolve	Resolve a version from a range.
override	Resolve a version even if an import or a lock says otherwise.
deprecate	Mark the matching version as deprecated.
blacklist	Mark the matching version as blacklisted.
resolve docker	Pin a Docker image tag to its digest.

Records

Records are written by the resolver. They state what was chosen.

Statement	Purpose
resolved	Picked by the most recent resolution and not yet locked.
locked	Pinned. Builds use this version.
deprecated	A version flagged as deprecated.
blacklisted	A version flagged as blacklisted.

Lexical rules

Whitespace (spaces, tabs and newlines) separates tokens and is otherwise ignored. A statement may span several lines.

Comments start with // and run to the end of the line. A comment is attached to the statement that follows it, and the writer keeps it with that statement when the file is rewritten. Comments after the last statement are allowed and discarded.

// Kept with the repository below, even if the file is reordered.
repository https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/;

Identifiers cover group ids, artifact ids, versions and names. They may contain letters, digits, ., -, _, +, ~, / and \.

Keywords are contextual. Every keyword is also a valid identifier, so artifacts called locked or docker, or a repository named snapshots, need no quoting:

repository https://repo.example.com/snapshots as snapshots;
resolve lowest com.example:locked:[1.0.0,2.0.0) via snapshots;

Regular expressions are written between slashes: /^com\.example:.*$/. Everything up to the next unescaped / belongs to the pattern, and \/ escapes a slash. Patterns use java.util.regex syntax, ignore case, and must match the whole string.

URLs are any scheme://… text up to the next whitespace or ;.

Errors

The parser is strict. A script with any syntax error is rejected outright, with the location of the first problem:

Syntax error in pom.deps: line 2:0 mismatched input 'resolve' expecting {'filtering', 'via', ';'}

The most common cause is a missing ; at the end of the previous line.