Prepare for 2.18.0 release

Author: cowtowncoder

pom.xml

@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@
   <parent>
     <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson</groupId>
     <artifactId>jackson-base</artifactId>
-    <version>2.18.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
+    <version>2.18.0</version>
   </parent>
   <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.dataformat</groupId>
   <artifactId>jackson-dataformats-binary</artifactId>

release-notes/VERSION-2.x

@@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ Active maintainers:
 === Releases ===
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
-2.18.0 (not yet released)
+2.18.0 (26-Sep-2024)
 
 #167: (avro) Incompatibility with Avro >=1.9.0 (upgrade to Avro 1.11.3)
  (reported by @Sage-Pierce)