RewritePomsForReleasePhase requires JDK 5.0

If JAVA_HOME is set to JDK-1.4 you cannot build the maven-release-manager as the RewritePomsForReleasePhase class uses 2 JDK-5 APIs on lines
254 urlPath.contains(CharSequence)
260 urlPath.replace(CharSequence, CharSequence)

If JDK-5 is required for the build environment then the POM needs to be modified to
<artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
<configuration>
<source>1.5</source>
<target>1.4</target>
</configuration>
</plugin>
Note that specifying <source>1.4</source> does not seem to ensure that only 1.4 APIs are used.
Just try setting JAVA_HOME to JDK-1.4 and build

Alternatively RewritePomsForReleasePhase should not used JDK-1.4 APIs.