Pass JAVA HOME as parameter to mvn

Question

I would like to know if it is possible to pass JAVA_HOME as parameter to mvn command line. I have searched almost everywhere, but couldn't find an answer to that.

I know we can set JAVA_HOME using export, but I need to pass it as parameter if that is possible. Something like:

 mvn install -DJava_Home=/usr/java/jdk-1.7.0

Answer 1

Another hacky way I did this: ( I have most of my projects on Java 7, but a handful on java 8 )

1) Add a new env variable JAVA8_HOME to your .zshrc ( or similar )

2) copy the 'mvn' executable and call it 'mvn8'

3) Replace 'JAVA_HOME' with 'JAVA8_HOME' in 'mvn8'

Now, mvn8 clean install should just work.

Answer 2

no, not directly, but looking at mvn.bat on my machine i see this promising snippet:

@REM Execute a user defined script before this one
if not "%MAVEN_SKIP_RC%" == "" goto skipRcPre
if exist "%HOME%\mavenrc_pre.bat" call "%HOME%\mavenrc_pre.bat"

so you could override any variable you like in a mavenrc_pre script file, although i realize this wont let you override java home from the command line. worst case, mvn is a simple script file and you could add the option to it. also note that simply overriding JAVA_HOME may not always produce the expected results as on many systems JAVA_HOME\bin is on the path. this means that even if you override it the previous jvm will still be on the path, which might lead to unexpected results.