Choose the most recent release version from The Central Repository.
Or, clone or fork the current SNAPSHOT directly from the relevant repository.
The artifacts downloaded from The Central Repository include a version number in the name, as in sketches-core-X.Y.Z.jar. This same number is also in the top section of the pom.xml file.
If jars are created using “mvn clean package” at the command line from a cloned or forked copy of the repository, the jars will be named sketches-core-X.Y.Z-SNAPSHOT.jar and will also be in the top section of the pom.xml file.
These are fully tested, production quality releases, and hopefully as bug-free as humanly possible. However, the code is continuously evolving and improvements in performance, documentation, additions to the API, and bug fixes do occur. When enough of these build up, especially for bug fixes or performance improvements, a new release will be issued to the Central Repository and the Z digit will be incremented. Generally, an incremented Z digit should be backward API compatible with the previous release. Although this might not be guaranteed for newly introduced functionality.
When a significant API change occurs that could affect backward compatibility, or major new functionality has been introduced, the Y digit will be incremented.
The X digit is being reserved for major refactorings of the library where backward API compatibility may not be guaranteed.
For the repositories that depend on core, such as sketches-hive, the version number may be incremented just to be in sync with the core repository, and may not reflect any actual code changes other than a change in the pom.xml to reflect the new dependency. If you just want to run Hive and don't require access to the sketches-core it is recommended that you download the “with-shaded-core.jar”, which includes the Hive jar as well as shaded versions of the core jar and memory jar. The shading avoids conflicts with other possible versions of core and memory that you might have in your system.
If you want the latest and greatest version of the code, it is certainly OK for you to create your own snapshot jars from a clone or fork. The code is automatically tested using the current test suite, but you might catch the code in transition to a new future release. Caveat Emptor.
Moved to github tags.