Maven Default Properties

Note: In Maven 3.0, all pom.* properties are deprecated. Use project.* instead!

Built in properties

${basedir} represents the directory containing pom.xml
${version} equivalent to ${project.version} or ${pom.version}

Pom/Project properties

All elements in the pom.xml, can be referenced with the project. prefix or using pom. as prefix. This list is just an example of some commonly used elements.

${project.build.directory} results in the path to your "target" dir, this is the same as ${pom.project.build.directory}
${project.build.outputDirectory} results in the path to your "target/classes" dir
${project.name} or ${pom.name} refers to the name of the project.
${project.version} or ${pom.version} refers to the version of the project.
${project.build.finalName} refers to the final name of the file created when the built project is packaged
${project.artifactId} refers to the artifact id

Local user settings

Similarly, values in the user's settings.xml can be referenced using property names with settings. prefix.

${settings.localRepository} refers to the path of the user's local repository.
${maven.repo.local} also works for backward compatibility with maven1 ??

Environment variables

Environment variables can be referenced using the env prefix

${env.M2_HOME} returns the Maven2 installation path.
${java.home} specifies the path to the current JRE_HOME environment use with relative paths to get for example:

<jvm>${java.home}..//bin//java.exe</jvm>

Java system properties

All Java System Properties defined by the JVM.

Custom properties in the POM

User defined properties in the pom.xml.

<project>
...
  <properties>
    <my.filter.value>hello</my.filter.value>
  </properties>
...
</project>


${my.filter.value} will result in hello if you inserted the above XML fragment in your pom.xml

Parent Project variables

How can parent project variables be accessed? You can use the prefix: ${project.parent}. A good way to determine possible variables is to have a look directly at the API. I'm currently using Maven 2.2.1, and to access the Parent you can use ${project.parent}. This will return an org.apache.maven.project.MavenProject instance.

To access the parent version: ${parent.version}.

Reflection Properties

The pattern ${someX.someY.someZ} can simply sometimes mean getSomeX().getSomeY().getSomeZ(). Thus, properties such as ${project.build.directory} is translated to getProject().getBuild().getDirectory()