Ask for maven archetype properties with defaults.

Question

I'm putting together a maven archetype that has a bunch of custom properties that are used to filter the various archetype resources. I have these specified with defaults in the archetype-metadata.xml e.g.

<requiredProperties>
  <requiredProperty key="application-name">
    <defaultValue>Some Application</defaultValue>
  </requiredProperty>>  
</requiredProperties>

However when I try to create a project with the archetype, it does not allow me to change these interactively. For instance, it asks for the version with default as follows

Define value for property 'version': 1.0-SNAPSHOT: 

allowing a version to be entered, but defaulting to 1.0-SNAPSHOT if nothing is entered. For my custom properties, it merely displays them prior to creating the new project

[INFO] Using property: application-name = Some Application

If I omit the default value from the archetype-metadata.xml then it will prompt me for a value, but there is no default.

Is it possible to supply a default and still get prompted?

Answer 1

I raised this on the Maven mailing list but got no reply. As a workaround in the meantime, system properties can be used to override them at the command line when the archetype is run

e.g. -Dapplication-name="Some Application"