Maven version auto-pom.xml

Can anyone explain me if the version is specified as auto as mentioned below for the dependencies

<version>auto</version>

how does it get resolved to the latest from t开发者_C百科he maven repository?

I see that some file when mvn exectutes an temporary file called auto-pom.xml is generated where all the auto is replaced with proper latest revisions from my repository like

<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>

I'm not sure what the question is exactly but Maven implements a version comparison algorithm that you can check in the sources of org.a.m.a.v.DefaultArtifactVersion.java. Also see the Versioning wiki page for an illustration and discussion of this algorithm.

Using this algorithm, I can imagine that Maven is able to check a repository for available versions and to determine the "latest" one.