How to push Maven artifact to Nexus through GitLab CI - maven

Question

I am new to GitLab and Nexus. I am trying to create artifact and push it to Nexus repo. I am getting error while running a job. Could anyone please help.
[ERROR] The specified user settings file does not exist: /builds/<project path>.m2/settings.xml
Build is executing successfully. Failing in test stage. Also added Nexus URL, Username and Password in gitlab Variables.
Is there a way to move settings.xml to GitLab?
.gitlab-ci.yml
image: maven:3-jdk-8
variables:
MAVEN_CLI_OPTS: "-s .m2/settings.xml --batch-mode"
MAVEN_OPTS: "-Dmaven.repo.local=.m2/repository"
cache:
paths:
- .m2/repository/
- target/
stages:
- build
- test
- package
- deploy
build:
stage: build
script:
- mvn compile
test:
stage: test
script:
- mvn $MAVEN_CLI_OPTS test
- echo "The code has been tested"
package:
stage: package
script:
- mvn $MAVEN_CLI_OPTS package -Dmaven.test.skip=true
- echo "Packaging the code"
artifacts:
paths:
- target/*.war
only:
- master
deploy:
stage: deploy
script:
- mvn $MAVEN_CLI_OPTS deploy -Dmaven.test.skip=true
- echo "installing the package in local repository"
only:
- master
pom
<distributionManagement>
<repository>
<id>nexus-releases</id>
<url>http://localhost:8081/repository/maven-releases/</url>
</repository>
</distributionManagement>
settings.xml
<server>
<id>nexus-releases</id>
<username>username</username>
<password>pass</password>
</server>
</servers>
<mirrors>
<mirror>
<id>central</id>
<name>central</name>
<url>http://localhost:8081/repository/maven-central/</url>
<mirrorOf>*</mirrorOf>
</mirror>