title: Maven release plugin and globally defined dependency versions
body: <p>I'm not sure whether the title makes a whole lot of sense and whether this <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8926605/maven-release-plugin-with-parameterized-version">post</a> already answers my question, but here it is:</p>
  
  <p>We have a multi-module project. As you would expect this projects has a combination of internal and third party dependencies. For the third party dependencies we define these in the dependency management section of our parent POM so that we can manage the versions of these dependencies in a single common place.</p>
  
  <p>As for inter-project (internal) dependencies, so far we've just entered the versions within each modules POM where a dependency is required. Then when doing a prepare with the release plugin, these versions are updated appropriately - all very nice.</p>
  
  <p>What we want, like with the third party dependencies, is to be able to specify the internal dependency versions in the parent POM and therefore have a single common place. I see three potential approaches.</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>We do this by creating a property in the parent POM.</li>
  <li>We do it via the dependency management section in the parent POM.</li>
  <li>We use the project version property as the dependency version.</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>The preference would be to use one of the first two approaches, though there isn't really a strong reason for this. This leads me onto the main concern and question: If we use either of the first two approaches, will the release plugin still update the dependency version during the prepare stage?</p>
  
  <p>All thoughts/feedback appreciated.</p>