I think that there might be an advantage in declaring the maven plugins to be an independent top-level that we release after a release of the core product, (and perhaps release in-between as needed). There's a pattern to maven plugin projects at maven.apache.org or the Mojo project at codehaus, and that pattern has some advantages, if only comparability and familiarity. We could use the invoker for tests, etc.
What do folks think?
