What does the name SNAPSHOT in jar mean? / What's wrong with *snapshot*.jars?

Question

I am using bitlyj snapshot jar to shorten URLs from the following link.

http://code.google.com/p/bitlyj/downloads/list

Will somebody explain me the term snapshot.jar? Are snapshot.jar files unstable or is there anything wrong with these kind of jars? What does 'snapshot' generally mean?

Answer 1

Yes, those files are usually automatically created from the current development branch without any manual testing.

Answer 2

SNAPSHOT indicates latest code in trunk or head. On whether you should use snapshot, the answer is depends:

• Is there a fix for a bug in the snapshot release thats not available in the stable release?
• Is there a new feature available in snapshot, but not available in stable version

You could make a call in these cases whether to use them or not.

Here's an article for your reference. It tells you when you should use snapshots.

We generally tend to use snapshots for maven plugins (some features are available in latest snapshots).