BATCH-2227: Allow multiple configs (xmls, java-files, packages) to be
loaded in ApplicationContextFactory
update copyright dates, fix test method typo, xml cleanup, add varg - for BATCH-2227
Removed redundant casts
BATCH-2229 & BATCH-2218: Removed OSGi related metadata and Maven POMs
Remove redundant hibernate-annotations dependencies
Updated README.md to remove maven references
Updated gradle.build to address Spring I/O hamcrest dependency
Added check to not publish certian sub projects
ignore pom.xml to avoid accidential commits
[artifactory-release] Release version 3.0.0.RC1
Updated Spring Data versions for Spring I/O
BATCH-2232: Fixed generics for RepositoryItemReader#setRepository
Update configuration of Spring IO plugin

This commit updates the configuration of the IO plugin to use an
external property, platformVersion, and to only apply the plugin when
this property is set. This removes the declaration of a snapshot
dependency from the normal build configuration and also breaks a
circular dependency between the projects that are in the Platform and
the Platform itself.

The commit also applies the configuration that was applied to the
standard test task, other than code coverage, to the new test tasks
that are created by the Spring IO plugin.

Two redundant Hibernate mapping files have been deleted. With more
recent versions of Hibernate the presence of these files was causing
test failures due to duplicate mappings.