Specifying Maven's local repository location as a CLI parameter

145
votes

Is it possible to set the location of the local Maven repository as argument on the Maven command line?

The thing is that I don't use the default one in ~/.m2/repository. However I checked out some project that is being built with its own settings with -s settings.xml. That settings.xml doesn't specify my local repository, so Maven uses uses ~/.m2/repository again... I would like to use a non-default local repository location without having to add a <localRepository> element in the project's settings.xml

I've tried

  • -DlocalRepository="..."
  • $mvn invoker:run -s settings.xml clean install -DskipTests -DlocalRepositoryPath=
  • -Dsettings.localRepository

but none of these options works.

So I think I have to decide whether I will be modifying a third party settings.xml or move my local repo to ~

3
maven
Obviously this is not your fault, but Maven projects shouldn't be providing a settings.xml. See maven.apache.org/guides/mini/guide-configuring-maven.html – oberlies

3 Answers

291
votes

use maven property maven.repo.local:

mvn -Dmaven.repo.local=$HOME/.my/other/repository clean install

No modifications to settings.xml are necessary.

10
votes

For git:

alias mvn='mvn "-Dmaven.repo.local=$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)/.m2/repository"'

This uses a separate maven repository in each git repository

2
votes

One kind of hacky way that would work is:

  1. Add <localRepository>${m2.localRepository}</localRepository> to your settings.xml
  2. In your mvn.sh or mvn.bat, add -Dm2.localRepository=<full path to home dir>/.m2/repository before the "$@" in the command that gets executed. This will make your default local repo stay where it should be.
  3. Now you can use mvn -Dm2.localRepository=... <phases/goals>. Because your command line system property gets added to the command line after the one in the mvn script, it will take precedence. (At least I'm pretty sure it works that way on both windows and linux, but testing will tell.)