This bug previously prevented us from using 2.0-beta-9 (our checkin policy requires issues in commit messages). There are other bugs in 2.0-beta-8, but previously it was the most workable. MRELEASE-526 prevents us from using 2.0.
However, this plugin configuration seems to work. It uses scm 1.3, and seems to solve this issue:
<build>
<pluginManagement>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<artifactId>maven-release-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.0-beta-9</version>
<dependencies>
<!-- Per http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/MRELEASE-442, scmCommentPrefix should work for release-plugin 2.0-beta-9
if scm 1.3 is used. -->
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.scm</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-scm-api</artifactId>
<version>1.3</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</pluginManagement>
Maven release manager properly passes custom message formatted with scmCommentPrefix plugin configuration parameter to the scm provider tag command but the scm tag command ignores the message and uses default.