Define maven profiles outside POM - maven

Question

Is there a way to define my maven profiles outside POM file but not in .m2/settings.xml?
I want to define them in a separate xml file inside the application (way to work efficiently with maven 2 and 3) because I am using maven 2 and intend to switch to 3 soon.

Answer 1

Until Maven 2.2.1 you could define your profiles into the profiles.xml file as a separate file but with Maven 3 this opportunity has been removed. The question ist why do you need a separate file for the profiles?

Answer 2

You may want to go through this maven documentation on build profiles, which describes the types of profiles and how each can be used.
As I see it, profiles cannot be defined outside pom.xml or settings.xml, if you want to use maven 3.

Answer 3

<profiles>
<profile>
<id>dev</id>
<activation>
<activeByDefault>true</activeByDefault>
</activation>
<properties>
<build.profile.id>dev</build.profile.id>
</properties>
</profile>
<profile>
<id>prod</id>
<properties>
<build.profile.id>prod</build.profile.id>
</properties>
</profile>
<profile>
<id>test</id>
<properties>
<build.profile.id>test</build.profile.id>
</properties>
</profile>
</profiles>
And add a filter
<filters>
<filter>src/test/resources/${build.profile.id}/config.properties</filter>
</filters>
And add any directory (dev, prod, test)

Answer 4

I was recently migrating an application to maven3 from maven2. With maven 3 there is no possibility to have external profiles. But what can be done is to have external property files. This can be achieved by maven-properties-plugin
<plugin>
<groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
<artifactId>properties-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.0-alpha-2</version>
<executions>
<!-- Associate the read-project-properties goal with the initialize phase,
to read the properties file. -->
<execution>
<phase>initialize</phase>
<goals>
<goal>read-project-properties</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<files>
<file>../com.tak/build.properties</file>
</files>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
So here I have explained how to do that http://programtalk.com/java/migrate-from-maven2x-to-maven3x/