Here's something I wrote up a while back for work and have touched up recently that discusses the structure of Maven 1.x.

Download file

While you wouldn't need it as a general user (although troubleshooting is helpful), its aimed more at someone digging seriously into plugin writing.

Definitely rough around the edges, but I hope it helps!

The Apache Maven team is pleased to announce the release of Maven 1.0.

http://maven.apache.org/start/download.html
(please be patient as the release may not have propogated to all mirrors yet)

Maven is a project management and project comprehension tool. Maven is 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.

New Features

* Bundle the Jelly XML tag library for build and for plugin's convenience
* Add different types of download progress meters.

Fixed bugs

* Fix property inheritence under some circumstances Issue: MAVEN-1296. Thanks to Eric Lapierre.
* now initialises the plugin if it has not already been loaded, removing the need for dependency handles
* Check last modified timestamp as well as conditional GET in case the server time is behind the local time Issue: MAVEN-1188.
* Bugfixes for new httpclient based downloading (incorrect timestamps) Issue: MAVEN-1343.
* Handle cross site redirects Issue: MAVEN-1353.
* Correct absolute paths with no drive designator on windows Issue: MAVEN-1290.
* Amend bootstrap to create directories that might not exist Issue: MAVEN-1341.
* If artifact is not a snapshot, don't continue checking for newer downloads once one is successful Issue: MAVEN-1344.

Plugin Highlights

The latest plugin releases are also included, with bug fixes and some new features.

We hope you enjoy using Maven! If you have any questions, please consult:

* the FAQ: http://maven.apache.org/faq.html
* the Wiki: http://wiki.codehaus.org/maven/
* the maven-user mailing list: http://maven.apache.org/mail-lists.html

For news and information, see:

* Maven Blogs: http://www.mavenblogs.com/

- The Apache Maven Team