A confusing Maven error. During usage of the mvn release plugin this error suggests that some dependencies can not be resolved. Actual reason is that during the release proces NO snapshot versions or revering to snapshot versions is allowed.

Solution is then also to make a release of all such dependencies. Probable reason for this is that SNAPSHOT versions are mutable in nexus, release versions are not (by default).  So having no SNAPSHOT versions in your released artifact makes the file more consistent.

[INFO] Resuming release from phase 'check-dependency-snapshots'
[INFO] Checking dependencies and plugins for snapshots ...
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD FAILURE
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 15.408s
[INFO] Finished at: Fri Mar 01 09:30:02 CET 2013
[INFO] Final Memory: 24M/213M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-release-plugin:2.0
:prepare (default-cli) on project <artifact id>: Can't release projec
t due to non released dependencies :
[ERROR] <package>:<artifact id>:war:1
.1.33-SNAPSHOT:compile
[ERROR] <package>:<artifact id>:pom:1.1.3
3-parent-SNAPSHOT
[ERROR] in project '<artifact id>' (<package>:<artifact id>:1.1.33-SNAPSHOT)
[ERROR] -> [Help 1]
[ERROR]
[ERROR] To see the full stack trace of the errors, re-run Maven with the -e swit
ch.
[ERROR] Re-run Maven using the -X switch to enable full debug logging.