Prepare for 2.18.1 release

Author: cowtowncoder

pom.xml

@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@
   <parent>
     <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson</groupId>
     <artifactId>jackson-base</artifactId>
-    <version>2.18.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
+    <version>2.18.1</version>
   </parent>
   <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.dataformat</groupId>
   <artifactId>jackson-dataformats-text</artifactId>

release-notes/VERSION-2.x

@@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ Active Maintainers:
 === Releases ===
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
-2.18.1 (not yet released)
+2.18.1 (28-Oct-2024)
 
 #499: (yaml) SnakeYAML upgrade to 2.3
  (contributed by @pjfanning)