The maven team is pleased to announce the Maven Artifact Plugin 1.5 release! 

http://maven.apache.org/reference/plugins/artifact/

Tools to manage artifacts and deployment. 

Changes in this version include:

  Changes:

o Wholly resolve the POM before deploying Issue: MPARTIFACT-49. 
o Deploy anything with SNAPSHOT in the version as a snapshot Issue: 
  MPARTIFACT-19. 
o Deprecated install-snapshot and deploy-snapshot goals 
o Replace bulk of code with Wagon Issue: MAVEN-1396. 

  Removed features:

o Remove deprecated old deployment method  

To automatically install the plugin, type the following on a single line:

maven plugin:download 
  -DgroupId=maven 
  -DartifactId=maven-artifact-plugin
  -Dversion=1.5

For a manual installation, you can download the plugin here:
http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/java-repository/maven/plugins/maven-artifact-plugin-1.5.jar
         

Have fun!
-The maven team