I\'ve got a git repo where the top level directory has three directories in it: java, COM, and csharp. As you might guess, the pom.xml lives in the java directory.
A
Perfoming release didn't deploy properly in not-root directory with maven-release-plugin version 2.4 (with both maven 3.0.3 and 3.0.4). Downgrading to maven-release-plugin version 2.2.1 fixed the problem.
Tested: add the following to your build/plugins section:
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-release-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.2.1</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>default</id>
<goals>
<goal>perform</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<pomFileName>subdir/pom.xml</pomFileName>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
Where "subdir" is the relative path to the directory where the pom.xml resides.
This works, at least with Maven 3.0.3. May work with different release plugin versions, but this is untested.
This works with Maven 3.0.4 and maven-release-plugin 2.5 and git 1.8.x.