title: How to get Maven to use the latest versions of certain plugins?
body: <p>I just lost 2 hours of time because of a bug in the maven-compiler-plugin v2.0.2 that was fixed in version v2.3.2.</p>
  
  <p>Apparently if you don't specify the version of the Maven compiler plugin, Maven 2.2.1 just gives you v2.0.2.</p>
  
  <p>Our project uses 15+ Maven plugins.  Some of them we want to pin down a certain version, but most of which (like the compiler plugin) we'd like to upgrade without having to think about it.</p>
  
  <p>Is there a way to do this automatically with Maven, or do we have to assign someone the thankless task of researching possible Maven plug-in upgrades every month and then changing the PluginManagement version numbers in our parent POM?</p>