[Hawkular-dev] Branch Kettle?

Related to the "Adding git SHA1 & Co. to manifest.mf to improve traceability" thread... In the interim between now and when we move to strong versioning could we perhaps just create a "stable" branch for kettle? Note the term "stable" as opposed to "release" or something like that. This idea was kicked around at the F2F as a possible solution. The stable branch would have poms updated with non-snapshot versions of the components and so would be reproducible. It could be used for demos without fear of snapshot regression. It could be used by QE for test-case development and [non-release] qualification. Kettle itself could be versioned, bumping it's version whenever a consumed component version was updated. Components would be required to make at least an initial release to get things going, and then should make subsequent releases at relatively short intervals, maybe every few weeks. Will this work and be helpful?