在pom.xml文件中包括每个用户的配置

Question

I'm working with a Java/Maven project. My version of Maven is "Apache Maven 2.2.1 (rdebian-10)".

I need to define some custom configuration when building the project. I'm used to C projects when you configure the project with various configuration flags (configure --this --that) and then the builds proceeds accordingly to the parameters defined/found by the configure script.

I need to emulate this feature with a Java/Maven project, a configuration system would be OK but also isolating the user specific parameters in a given file should be fine as well. For example I would like to be able to define per-user specific configurations in a file included by pom.xml (for example custom.pom.xml). For example in my project I need to specify the path where the program will write temporary files and such.

My question is, is it possible to isolate the per-user specific configuration in a file included by pom.xml, and/or what is the custom way to deal with this problem with Maven projects?

Right now I'm committing a pom.xml.template file, which needs to be renamed to pom.xml and edited with the user-specific parameters, but this is awkward because when the Maven requirement changes (eg if a new dependency is added) the developer must update his pom.xml file. This is the relevant snippet from my pom.xml.template file:

<profiles>
    <profile>
        <id>production</id>
        <properties>
            <database.url>jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/myProject</database.url>
            <database.user>myProject</database.user>
            <database.password>myProjectPassword</database.password>
            <repository_path>my/project/repo/path</repository_path>
            <external_tool_bin_path>/absolute/path/to/tool/</external_tool_bin_path>
            <external_scripts_path>/path/to/scripts/</external_scripts_path>
            <tmpdir>tmp</tmpdir>
        </properties>
        <build>
            <finalName>myProject</finalName>
        </build>
    </profile>

[...]

External tool and scripts are located in per-user specific paths (depending on system/installation).

Another way would be to use distinct profiles for each developer, which is awkward in a different way (since I don't want to hardcode user profiles in the committed pom.xml file).

Alternatively I could write a configure script but this looks overkill, and not very portable, unless I want to require the user to rely on MinGW or similar.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I suggest you use maven profiles , and the per user configuration, keep as environment variables which are referenced from the pom's profiles as ${env.PARAMETER} .
You will have to instruct the users to set their environment as needed.

This way, you can enjoy both features and not have user specific values in source control.

I hope this helps.