smokeTestRelease.checkMaven should not require a release branch

Currently this throws an exception, but I think it should unpack any pom templates it needs from the artifacts themselves.

1. its nice to be able to generate and test RC's without having an official branch yet. I am currently doing this just to
   move us closer to release (just trying to find bugs etc). Also anyone should be able to just toss up an RC at any time.
2. its better to test the artifacts themselves rather than anything in SVN. At the least the -src jars have an svn export
   so this should work... if it doesn't, then there is a packaging bug.