versionRuleset.xml

<ruleset comparisonMethod="maven"
         xmlns="http://mojo.codehaus.org/versions-maven-plugin/rule/2.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://mojo.codehaus.org/versions-maven-plugin/rule/2.0.0 https://www.mojohaus.org/versions-maven-plugin/xsd/rule-2.0.0.xsd">
<rules>
    <rule groupId="*" artifactId="*" comparisonMethod="maven">
      <!--
            This regex is intended to restrict version updates to the last stable releases of dependencies and plugins.

            Any version that does not contain the stable maven-plugin version naming scheme (EG "-M7"),
                but does contain letters a-zA-Z (and optional digits after)
       -->
       <ignoreVersions>
          <ignoreVersion type="regex">^(?!.[\s\S]*-M\d*).[\s\S]*.*[a-zA-Z]\d.*$</ignoreVersion>
       </ignoreVersions>
    </rule>
    <!--
         xml-apis has a screwy version structure where the 2.x versions are older than the 1.x versions (check the dates in maven!).
            we are explicitly ignoring all of the 2.x version lineage of the project.
    -->
    <rule groupId="xml-apis" artifactId="xml-apis" comparisonMethod="maven">
       <ignoreVersions>
          <ignoreVersion type="regex">2.*</ignoreVersion>
       </ignoreVersions>
    </rule>
    <!--
         Mockito is bound to v.3.x until powermock gets updated
         Prevent auto-update of mockito based on that expectation

         https://github.com/powermock/powermock/issues/1109
    -->
    <rule groupId="org.mockito" artifactId="mockito-core" comparisonMethod="maven">
       <ignoreVersions>
          <ignoreVersion type="regex">^0{0,1}[4-9].*</ignoreVersion>
       </ignoreVersions>
    </rule>
    <rule groupId="javax.servlet" artifactId="javax.servlet-api" comparisonMethod="maven">
       <ignoreVersions>
          <ignoreVersion type="regex">^0{0,1}[4-9].*</ignoreVersion>
       </ignoreVersions>
    </rule>
  </rules>
</ruleset>
<!--
###########################
RE-USABLE REGEX REFERENCES
###########################
   Keep in mind that regexes are used as exclusions:
   Anything that *DOES NOT MATCH IS VALID FOR UPDATE*

#####  REGEX ##############
^0{0,1}[4-9].*
###########################
Occassionally we need to couple to a major version of an artifact.
  This REGEX is an example of how to tie to the latest artifact of major versions 0,1,2,or 3
 -->