Maven alternate pom

Question

Is there an argument when calling a maven build to specify an alternate file in place of the standard pom.xml file name?

Basically, I have a need to run the test goal of my maven build with a variety of configurations. Right now I am having to use an external script to update the standard pom with this configurations, then revert the file after. I would much rather just be able to maintain several seperate configuration files and call maven with the specific one I need.

What I am wondering is if there is some way to override the pom.xml such as

mvn clean test   (uses standard pom.xml) mvn clean test -Dmaven.source=alternate.xml mvn clean test -Dmaven.source=alternate2.xml 

Is this possible?

Answer 1

use the -f option:

mvn -f <other pom file> 

Answer 2

I will leave the accepted answer as just that, since it is the proper solution to running with an alternate pom file. However, for the use case I described above, I now feel the correct methodology would be to use maven profiles within the pom file.

Maven Profiles Introduction

With profiles, all versions of the test configurations can be contained within the master pom file and then executed as follows:

mvn clean test -PstandardConfig mvn clean test -PalternateConfig mvn clean test -PanotherConfig