Is it possible to set the location of the settings.xml file inside the pom.xml file.
I know you can do it from the command line typing mvn -s location/of/settings.xml, but I wanted to know if I can set that within the pom.xml so I don't have to keep typing through command line.
No. And that's probably a horrible idea, from a security standpoint. It'd allow the creator of a pom to bypass all your settings.xml settings. If you do the mvn -s location/of/settings.xml you will at least know it happened. But if you just randomly build a project, who knows how malicious that project's creator was.
No, but you can set what you need from the settings.xml file into the pom.xml and it will override what's in settings.xml
Something that may help you get what you want are profiles:
A profile in Maven is an alternative set of configuration values which set or override default values. Using a profile, you can customize a build for different environments. Profiles are configured in the pom.xml and are given an identifier. Then you can run Maven with a command-line flag that tells Maven to execute goals in a specific profile. The following pom.xml uses a production profile to override the default settings of the Compiler plugin.
来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14654350/maven-set-the-settings-xml-location-in-the-pom-xml