Set plugin's property on the command line in m

Question

In maven 2.x, how would one set a plugin's property on the command line instead of in the <configuration> of that plugin in the pom or in settings.xml?

For example, if I was using mvn dependency:copy-dependencies(seen here) how can I set the useRepositoryLayout property without touching either the pom or my settings.xml?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Define the properties as arbitrary properties ... not the standard maven props such as version. In my case I defined a new property build.version:

<properties> build.version=unknown </properties>

I use the property:

<warName>${build.version}</warName>

I define the property:

mvn -P prod -Dbuild.version=app_name-branch_name-build_number package

Answer 2

The other answers here were not clear to me. This is the way I understand it:

If the plugin code uses a system property for its parameter, then you can define the value on the command line.

There are 3 different ways you can accomplish this in the plugin code:

@parameter expression="${aSystemProperty}" 
@parameter default-value="${anExpression}"
@parameter property="aSystemProperty"

If any or a combination of these methods are used in the plugin code for a particular property, then you can specify a value for the plugin parameter, on the command line. Above code was taken from maven docs here.

If you are using a plugin with the above code, you could specify a value for your property using the following command:

mvn -DaSystemProperty=my-value <goal-here>

Answer 3

Usually you set maven properties using the same syntax as java system properties. Have you tried the following line?

mvn -DuseRepositoryLayout=true dependency:copy-dependencies

Answer 4

Answer was right in front of me in the copy-dependencies mojo docs (I even linked to it). The documentation for the property includes the Expression you can refer to it by.

useRepositoryLayout: Place each artifact in the same directory layout as a default repository. example: /outputDirectory/junit/junit/3.8.1/junit-3.8.1.jar

* Type: boolean
* Since: 2.0-alpha-2
* Required: No
* Expression: ${mdep.useRepositoryLayout}
* Default: false

To set this property from command line you need to run

mvn -Dmdep.useRepositoryLayout=true <goals go here>