maven: Is it possible to override location of local repository via the use of command line option or env variable?

78
votes

Currently we specify the location of local repository in the settings.xml. Is it possible to override this setting via command line or env variable, such that I can use an alternative location sometimes?

2
mavenmaven-2
Possible duplicate of Specifying Maven's local repository location as a CLI parameter – Ingo Karkat
It didn't occur to me why this would be useful until now - if you're working on several branches (a release branch, a trunk branch) and the source tree is complex, trying to get compilation to work can be a nightmare if you're just using 1.0-SNAPSHOT as your version. Having separate .m2 repos circumvents a lot of this. – Sridhar Sarnobat

2 Answers

138
votes

You would need to specify the maven.repo.local parameter to do this. 

mvn package -Dmaven.repo.local=/alternate/repo/location

Here is a related SO question.

18
votes

Use the localRepository setting in your settings.xml file. Example:

<settings>
  <localRepository>/repo</localRepository>
  ...
</settings>

See here for more info.

You can also set the repository via the command line using "-Dmaven.repo.local=" such as:

mvn -U clean install -Dmaven.repo.local=C:\tmp