Here is the situation, as I've documented in MRELEASE-875:
Using the trunk of the maven-release-plugin + SCM 1.9.1, and using either git 1.8.5.2 or git 2.1, the problem is fixed as I see it. The contents of the pull request suggest that it was not fixed for the person who made the pull request, but since I can't repro, and since the JIRA does not give a specific git version or a specific test case, my inclination is to push ahead with a release of the release plugin that uses 1.9.1. I did look at the test repo in the SCM pull request, but (a) it seems broken, and (b) it's the same as my test repo, structurally.
