Thanks for the suggestion I will give it a try. However I would
still
be interested to know the 'official' steps for the build, for example
if no existing binary package was available?
Then you would need to compile Maven some other way (Maven distribution
includes Ant build.xml script that can be used to bootstrap it).
Once you have your working maven package you can rebuild it without
bootstrapping.
Another (easier) option would be using binaries provided by upstream.
Just package them and use to properly rebuild maven from sources.
Mikolaj