Release strategies

[Martin Gilday <ma...@imap.cc>]

Having performed many releases with Maven recently I have found my
current procedure to be increasingly inefficient.  I come here seeking
either improvements or pointers to plugins to assist me.

Here is what I have currently:
A number of web apps that each depend on the SAME service artifact,
persistence artifact and a number of utility artifacts.  During
development the web apps all have these dependencies set to the
snapshots, i.e 1.1-SNAPSHOT.  This is due to each of the dependant
artifacts always being in a state of change at the same time as the
webapps.  They have the same dependencies but are distinct projects, so
I have not made a multi-module layout.
The problem starts when it comes to performing the release.  I generally
use the command "mvn deploy -DperformRelease=true".  Before a webapp is
released each of the dependant artifacts will have a release performed. 
Then when it comes to releasing the webapp I have to manually update the
pom and change the dependencies from snapshots to released versions. 
After the release I have to then go back through it changing them back
to snapshots.  

I have in the past used the release plugin.  This took care of any SCM
issues (although I dont mind doing this manually).  Unfortunately at the
time the plugin had some bugs so I stopped using it.  I have not looked
at it recently but I do not think it would solve my problem regarding
changing dependencies.

Ideally what I think I would like is a plugin that when performing a
release prompts for the version number of internal dependencies, creates
a new pom based on these, performs the deploy, and finally discards the
generated pom in favour of the original.  This would require some
dependcies to have to be annotated as local, to prevent being prompted
each time for versions of 3rd party ones.

So my point boils down to the following:
Am I inherintly wrong in trying to switch back and forth between
snapshots like I do?
Are there any existing plugins to assist with this?
Has anyone got a proven pattern they follow?

Thank you for any assistance,
Martin Gilday.

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