Recursively defining maven properties

Question

Hello there.

We are attempting to re-factor our modularized maven building. We've introduced a property DEPLOYMENT_ENV which might be "prod", "dev", "staging", or what not. The mentality we had going in was that we could then define, say:

dev.jdbc.username = yoyodyne
dev.jdbc.password = 0verthruster
staging.jdb.username = cavaliers
staging.jdbc.password = 8thdim

Where this seems to break down is feeding maven plugin's configurations. For example, DBUnit needs a username. Semantically, the solution we had in mind looked like the below, however maven does not allow for recursive property definitions in this fashion:

<configuration>
    <username>${${DEPLOYMENT_ENV}.jdbc.username}</username>
</configuration>

Any ideas for parameterizing maven builds, such that we can keep our big huge central list of property definitions?

Answer 1

Instead of different property names you can simply use same properties, but declare them in different profiles, either in pom.xml or in settings.xml

Answer 2

Could you be a little more specific about the issue you encounter? Do you have any error?

I already used this recursive property definition in one of my pom.xml, in a antrun plugin <configuration> and it works well:

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-antrun-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>1.2</version>
            <executions>
                <execution>
                    <phase>package</phase>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>run</goal>
                    </goals>
                    <configuration>
                        <tasks>
                            ...
                            <ftp server="${my-ftp-url}" userid="${ftp-${appli}-${env}-username}" password="${ftp-${appli}-${env}-password}"
                                remotedir="${remoteDir}/sources" passive="yes">
                                <fileset dir="../target/">
                                    <include name="*.tar.gz"/>
                                </fileset>
                            </ftp>
                            ...

As you can see in this code snippet, I use the ${ftp-${appli}-${env}-username} property, where ${appli}, ${env} and ${ftp-xxx-yyy-username} are properties that come from command line or settings.xml.

Anyway, as suggested by Eugene Kuleshov, I would go for a set of <profiles> that only define some properties, using <properties> tags, or an external property file:

<build>
    <plugins>
        <!-- Properties loader -->
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
            <artifactId>properties-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>1.0-alpha-1</version>
            <executions>
                <execution>
                    <phase>initialize</phase>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>read-project-properties</goal>
                    </goals>
                    <configuration>
                        <files>
                            <file>${basedir}/${env-properties-file}</file>
                        </files>
                    </configuration>
                </execution>
            </executions>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>
...
<profiles>
    <!-- Development -->
    <profile>
        <id>dev</id>
        <activation>
            <activeByDefault>true</activeByDefault>
            <property>
                <name>env</name>
                <value>dev</value>
            </property>
        </activation>
        <properties>
            <env-properties-file>dev-environment.properties</env-properties-file>
        </properties>
    </profile>

    <!-- Homologation -->
    <profile>
        <id>hom</id>
        <activation>
            <activeByDefault>false</activeByDefault>
            <property>
                <name>env</name>
                <value>hom</value>
            </property>
        </activation>
        <properties>
            <env-properties-file>homologation-environment.properties</env-properties-file>
        </properties>
    </profile>
    ...