Fixing standalone maven-core build...fixing metadata merge where lastUpdated == "null" (null-string)...and finally, disabling plugin resolution from referencing the current project, since this will really screw up builds of plugins that are referenced in the plugin lifecycle mapping...like maven-surefire-plugin.
maven/components/trunk/maven-core/src/main/java/org/apache/maven/plugin/version/DefaultPluginVersionManager.java