title: How to handle major framework/dependency upgrades?
body: <p>Looking for some best practices on handling a major dependency upgrades within a project, assuming the use of a dependency management tool(e.g., Maven 2).</p>
  
  <p>Specifically, I'm interested in:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>How to get an inherited application up-to-date(e.g., Spring 1.2.x to 2.5.x)</li>
  <li>What practices can be put into place to after such an overhaul to keep applications somewhat up-to-date</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Your own experiences or any articles/papers you've come across/found to be useful are welcome.</p>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT:</strong>
  Updating a dependency version number is trivial. I'm more looking for how you go about tackling the changes you need to make, based on changes to the dependency(deprecation, deletion, changes to types in parameters/return values, etc...). And if there is a good way to ease these changes in the future, as keeping your dependencies up-to-date <strong>should</strong> allow you to stay on top of changes and prevent a lot of time being wasted just to get feature 'more securer x 2.1'.</p>