Environment Variable with Maven

Question

I\'ve ported a project from Eclipse to Maven and I need to set an environment variable to make my project work.

In Eclipse, I go to \"Run -> Run configurations\" and

Answer 1

You can just pass it on the command line, as

mvn -DmyVariable=someValue install

[Update] Note that the order of parameters is significant - you need to specify any options before the command(s).[/Update]

Within the POM file, you may refer to system variables (specified on the command line, or in the pom) as ${myVariable}, and environment variables as ${env.myVariable}. (Thanks to commenters for the correction.)

Update2

OK, so you want to pass your system variable to your tests. If - as I assume - you use the Surefire plugin for testing, the best is to specify the needed system variable(s) within the pom, in your plugins section, e.g.

    
        ...
        
            org.apache.maven.plugins
            maven-surefire-plugin
            ...
            
                ...
                
                    conf
                
            
        
        ...