the release plugin will not have any further releases in its current form. it will be replaced by the scm plugin's release functionality.
IF these do not cover the required functionality, please elaborate on what you are using it for.

I'm using the release:setup-distribution-bin goal to copy dependencies into my target directory before generating an IzPack installer using the izpack plugin. However, the release plugin does not work for copying in non-jar dependencies, e.g. EJB and EAR artifacts. Do you have any suggestions as to which other plugin/goal to use instead in order to copy in the dependencies before packaging? I cannot find anything similar in the scm plugin.

Here is the relevant part of my project.properties:

maven.release.distribution.categories=\
common-endorsed:common-pack/lib/endorsed,\
client:client-pack/client,\
server-deploy:server-pack/server/default/deploy,\
server-lib:server-pack/server/default/lib

and my project.xml contains dependencies such as

<dependency>
<groupId>jboss</groupId>
<artifactId>jbossall-client</artifactId>
<version>4.0.2</version>
<properties>
<category>client</category>
</properties>
</dependency>

Cheers,

Fredrik