Sounds close, but I was proposing that we have a bootstrap version that we use to build the first few jars and configurations. Are you planing on supporting installation into a raw "cold" config store directory? In this case we couldn't possibly have a running server yet (since we are still building it :)
It is self bootstrapping. There is a released version in my home directory that can be used to build itself or newer versions of itself. Having that seed there eliminates the need to bootstrap every time.
The plugin builds artifacts which are installed inot the maven repo and which can be used to build other configuration artifacts just like jars; there is no need for a "cold" config store.
Configuration artifacts can be installed anywhere; typically they would be user applications that would be installed into a running server.
When building our distribution we just need to get enough running that we can talk to its ConfigStore; that can be done by the assembly plugin that is generating the final distribution (e.g. by starting a LocalConfigStore in-VM pointing to the target directory).
This separation of configuration packaging from assembly not only makes things easier for our users, it also makes the build simpler. At the same time it allows for multiple assemblies that can use different artifacts (e.g. a Jetty assembly vs. a Tomcat assembly).
-- Jeremy
