Project owner able to roll releases but "Administer releases" permission not checked

That checkbox probably appeared when releases were enabled as the sandbox project was promoted. Project/project_release can either:

• Make sure it gets checked when releases are enabled.
• Show it as checked anyway.

Given the code used for the access callback for node/add/project-release/%project, this is by design, when it happens to the node owner.

function project_user_access($project, $permission, $account = NULL) {
  global $user;

  if ($account == NULL) {
    $account = $user;
  }

  if (empty($account->uid)) {
    return FALSE;
  }

  $project_obj = is_numeric($project) ? node_load($project) : $project;
  if (!isset($project_obj) || (isset($project_obj->type) && !project_node_is_project($project_obj))) {
    return FALSE;
  }

  // If the user has the site-wide admin permission, always grant access.
  if (user_access('administer projects')) {
    return TRUE;
  }

  // Project owners are treated as super users and can always access.
  if ($account->uid == $project_obj->uid) {
    return TRUE;
  }

  // Otherwise, see if the user has the right permission for this project.
  return !empty($project_obj->project['maintainers'][$account->uid]['permissions'][$permission]);
}

Project owners are treated as super users and have any permission passed to the access callback. It makes more sense to always show the permission checkboxes as selected, for the node owner.

Thanks, this has been deployed to Drupal.org.