I confess that I never quite reproduced srowen's strange behavior. Instead, I applied a few bandaids to the poms to get more predictable behavior:
1) I made collections depend on collections-codegen, in addition to using it, to ensure that the reactor would process the former before the later. 2) I added explicit configuration for the maven-release-plugin based on models that work for me every day. 3) I did a little profile refining to try to speed up the process a bit. then I sacrificed the requisite goat, clicked my heels together, and ran the usual commands. I have a small update to make to the confluence page. I've heard tell that the official Apache process is as follows: 1) Vote someone as release manager. This shifts liability from the person to the foundation in the event of some complaint. 2) Prepare the release. 3) Vote the release. Not all projects seem to make a habit of item #1, but unless someone is sure that I'm confused, it would be nice.
