The Apache Maven team has announced the release of Maven 1.1-beta-1

http://maven.apache.org/start/download.html

Maven is described as "a project management and project comprehension tool, based on the concept of a project object model: builds, documentation creation, site publication, and distribution publication are all controlled from the project object model. Maven also provides tools to create source metrics, change logs based directly on source repository,
and source cross-references."

Its developers released the following objectives regarding the new release:

    * Integration of Maven 2 technologies such as Maven Wagon, Maven SCM
and the new model code
    * Ant 1.6.5 support
    * Upgrade to later releases of dependencies, in particular Jelly
    * Significant improvements in memory usage
    * Improved POM layout
    * Bugfixes

With just a few exceptions [1], Maven 1.1 is backwards compatible with  Maven 1.0, its developers says. They have also noted that developers must ensure that "Maven 1.1 is first in your path if  you want to have it installed side-by-side with Maven 1.0.2."