Maven 3 Plugin Development with Repository Queries

Hi,
 
I am developing a plugin that needs to query the repositories. I'm using the Aether API because I thought that's the Maven 3 way to do it (cf. http://blog.sonatype.com/2011/01/how-to-use-aether-in-maven-plugins/) and because many of the Maven 2 methods are marked as deprecated. With Maven 3.0.5, everything works fine. But now, trying Maven 3.2.1 and 3.2.2, I get an exception:

Error injecting: com.dialogika.infport.plugins.helper.CheckParentMojo
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/sonatype/aether/artifact/Artifact

 
It is the injection of org.sonatype.aether.RepositorySystem that does not work anymore:

@Component
private RepositorySystem repoSystem;

 
First of all, I am of course interested in how to fix this problem, but, asking more generally: Is the Aether API still the way of how to resolve artifacts? Or should I better stick to the Maven 2 API (as most of the plugins out there still are, as I saw)?
 
And, in addition to this: Are there any good, up-to-date resources on how to write maven plugins? Some plugins I could use as a a reference? Many of the tutorials and examples seem to be quite out-dated and not going very deep into details.
 
Thanks in advance for your help!
 
Johannes