How to activate a profile in a maven submodule using a property?

Question

I am using Maven 3.6.0 and OpenJDK8 on Ubuntu 18.04 (also tested with Alpine Linux).

I have a pom.xml in the root of my project that includes my submodules :

...
  <modules>
    <module>mysubmodule</module>
  </modules>
...

In the mysubmodule folder, the pom.xml has a profile that I want to activate based on a property passed to the mvn executable:

...
    <profile>
      <id>my-profile</id>
      <activation>
        <property>
          <name>activateMyProfile</name>
        </property>
      </activation>
      ...
    </profile>
...

I then execute mvn to start the build, but the profile is never activated:

• If I run mvn -DactivateMyProfile release:prepare from the root of my project, the profile is never activated and never runs
• If I run mvn release:prepare from the root of my project, the profile is never run.

I also tried the inverse:

...
    <profile>
      <id>my-profile</id>
      <activation>
        <property>
          <name>!doNotActivateMyProfile</name>
        </property>
      </activation>
      ...
    </profile>
...

• If I run mvn -DdoNotActivateMyProfile release:prepare from the root of my project, the profile is still executed
• If I run mvn release:prepare from the root of my project, the profile is also executed

It looks like mvn is not able to see the properties being passed through the command line. What is the correct way to activate a profile in a submodule using a property?

Answer 1

As I am using the maven release plugin, parameters must be passed using the -Darguments argument.

For example, instead of using mvn -DactivateMyProfile release:prepare , the correct invocation is: mvn -Darguments=-DactivateMyProfile release:prepare

If there are multiple arguments, use mvn -Darguments="-DactivateMyProfile -DsomeOtherArg -DanotherArg=something" release:prepare