Release experiment

[Martin Desruisseaux]

I'm not very familiar with the "mvn release" plugins, but maybe it is 
designed for a context slightly different than our current one? (unless 
I missed some configuration parameters). I though that we could create 
the 0.3 branch before to release, since some material are removed on 
that branch compared to the trunk. But the plugins replaced the 
0.3-SNAPSHOT version numbers by 0.4-SNAPSHOT on the branch, leaving 
trunk unchanged. Strangely, it created a 0.3 tags which still have the 
0.3-SNAPSHOT version number instead than a plain 0.3. Maybe we have done 
something wrong?

I wonder, given that there is some additional steps to do (e.g. replace 
the "0.3-SNAPSHOT" string in some Java constants too), we may have to 
customize the release process anyway. Does anyone have some experience 
about customizing the Maven release process? Or what about exploring the 
opportunity of creating a Ant task?

My understanding is that "mvn release" just performs version number 
change and commit a tag on the SVN. Signing the JAR files is done by the 
Maven "package" phase, which would still be executed. Is that right?

    Martin