How to pass Maven settings via environmental vars

Question

In our setting.xml file we have the following:

<servers>
    <server>
      <id>deploymentRepo</id>
      <username>repouser</username>
      <password>repopwd</password>
    </server>
</servers>

Would it be possible to pass those settings (or their equivalent) via environmental variables instead of the settings.xml?

Answer 1

Yes, you can do this in two ways:

• passing properties in the command line, using variables. For example, you can use in your settings.xml something like this:

<servers>
    <server>
      <id>deploymentRepo</id>
      <username>${server.username}</username>
      <password>${server.password}</password>
    </server>
</servers>

And in the command line, pass these variables in this way:

mvn clean package -Dserver.username=yourusername -Dserver.password=yourpassword

Please note that passing password as command-line options is a security issue and therefore prefer the second option.

• exporting environments properties. For example, if you export (in Linux, something like export SERVER_USERNAME=yourusername) SERVER_USERNAME and SERVER_PASSWORD variables, you can use like this:

<servers>
    <server>
      <id>deploymentRepo</id>
      <username>${env.SERVER_USERNAME}</username>
      <password>${env.SERVER_PASSWORD}</password>
    </server>
</servers>

For more information about properties, see the reference documentation.