Maven project version inheritance – do I have to specify the parent version?

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Since Maven 3.5.0 you can use the ${revision} placeholder for that. The use is documented here: Maven CI Friendly Versions.

In short the parent pom looks like this (quoted from the Apache documentation):

<project>
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <parent>
    <groupId>org.apache</groupId>
    <artifactId>apache</artifactId>
    <version>18</version>
  </parent>
  <groupId>org.apache.maven.ci</groupId>
  <artifactId>ci-parent</artifactId>
  <name>First CI Friendly</name>
  <version>${revision}</version>
  ...
  <properties>
    <revision>1.0.0-SNAPSHOT</revision>
  </properties>
  <modules>
    <module>child1</module>
    ..
  </modules>
</project>

and the child pom like this

<project>
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <parent>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.ci</groupId>
    <artifactId>ci-parent</artifactId>
    <version>${revision}</version>
  </parent>
  <groupId>org.apache.maven.ci</groupId>
  <artifactId>ci-child</artifactId>
   ...
</project>

You also have to use the Flatten Maven Plugin to generate pom documents with the dedicated version number included for deployment. The HowTo is documented in the linked documentation.

Also @khmarbaise wrote a nice blob post about this feature: Maven: POM Files Without a Version in It?

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