Passing command line arguments from Maven as properties in pom.xml

Question

For your property example do:

mvn install "-Dmyproperty=my property from command line"

Note quotes around whole property definition. You'll need them if your property contains spaces.

I used the properties plugin to solve this.

Properties are defined in the pom, and written out to a my.properties file, where they can then be accessed from your Java code.

In my case it is test code that needs to access this properties file, so in the pom the properties file is written to maven's testOutputDirectory:

<configuration>
    <outputFile>${project.build.testOutputDirectory}/my.properties</outputFile>
</configuration>

Use outputDirectory if you want properties to be accessible by your app code:

<configuration>
    <outputFile>${project.build.outputDirectory}/my.properties</outputFile>
</configuration>

For those looking for a fuller example (it took me a bit of fiddling to get this working as I didn't understand how naming of properties tags affects ability to retrieve them elsewhere in the pom file), my pom looks as follows:

<dependencies>
     <dependency>
      ...
     </dependency>
</dependencies>

<properties>
    <app.env>${app.env}</app.env>
    <app.port>${app.port}</app.port>
    <app.domain>${app.domain}</app.domain>
</properties>

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>2.20</version>
        </plugin>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
            <artifactId>properties-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>1.0.0</version>
            <executions>
                <execution>
                    <phase>generate-resources</phase>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>write-project-properties</goal>
                    </goals>
                    <configuration>
                        <outputFile>${project.build.testOutputDirectory}/my.properties</outputFile>
                    </configuration>
                </execution>
            </executions>
        </plugin>

    </plugins>
</build>

And on the command line:

mvn clean test -Dapp.env=LOCAL -Dapp.domain=localhost -Dapp.port=9901

So these properties can be accessed from the Java code:

 java.io.InputStream inputStream = Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader().getResourceAsStream("my.properties");
 java.util.Properties properties = new Properties();
 properties.load(inputStream);
 appPort = properties.getProperty("app.port");
 appDomain = properties.getProperty("app.domain");

Inside pom.xml

<project>

.....

<profiles>
    <profile>
        <id>linux64</id>
        <activation>
            <activeByDefault>true</activeByDefault>
        </activation>
        <properties>
            <build_os>linux</build_os>
            <build_ws>gtk</build_ws>
            <build_arch>x86_64</build_arch>
        </properties>
    </profile>

    <profile>
        <id>win64</id>
        <activation>
            <property>
                <name>env</name>
                <value>win64</value>
            </property>
        </activation>
        <properties>
            <build_os>win32</build_os>
            <build_ws>win32</build_ws>
            <build_arch>x86_64</build_arch>
        </properties>
    </profile>
</profiles>

.....

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.eclipse.tycho</groupId>
    <artifactId>target-platform-configuration</artifactId>
    <version>${tycho.version}</version>
    <configuration>
        <environments>
            <environment>
                <os>${build_os}</os>
                <ws>${build_ws}</ws>
                <arch>${build_arch}</arch>
            </environment>
        </environments>
    </configuration>
</plugin>

.....

In this example when you run the pom without any argument mvn clean install default profile will execute.

When executed with mvn -Denv=win64 clean install

win64 profile will executed.

Please refer http://maven.apache.org/guides/introduction/introduction-to-profiles.html

You can give variable names as project files. For instance in you plugin configuration give only one tag as below:-

<projectFile>${projectName}</projectFile>

Then on command line you can pass the project name as parameter:-

mvn [your-command] -DprojectName=[name of project]