I've seen mvn projects that spin like a top and others that were a disaster.
I think it's little recognized that there is a scaling limit for snapshots. If you have 20 people developing 20 projects and they are co-located in the same room with the server builds work 50-80% of the time and people think it's fine. If you're the one guy who is remote and has a slow connection, builds work 0% of the time. The problem is that at slightly different times you get slightly different snapshots that aren't compatible with each other -- it's a scaling problem because if you add enough developers and enough projects it will eventually get you.
I've worked at other places when the mvn clean was necessary every time; other developers thought this shouldn't be necessary and I was a doofus except I was able to make consistent progress like a ratchet on the project and get it done and they weren't.
Where I am now mvn is just fine, whenever it screws up there's a rational explanation and we're doing it wrong.
I think it's little recognized that there is a scaling limit for snapshots. If you have 20 people developing 20 projects and they are co-located in the same room with the server builds work 50-80% of the time and people think it's fine. If you're the one guy who is remote and has a slow connection, builds work 0% of the time. The problem is that at slightly different times you get slightly different snapshots that aren't compatible with each other -- it's a scaling problem because if you add enough developers and enough projects it will eventually get you.
I've worked at other places when the mvn clean was necessary every time; other developers thought this shouldn't be necessary and I was a doofus except I was able to make consistent progress like a ratchet on the project and get it done and they weren't.
Where I am now mvn is just fine, whenever it screws up there's a rational explanation and we're doing it wrong.