Solved: Activating Maven Profiles by Environment Variable

The maven profiles manual is confusing when it discusses activating maven profiles via environment variables. The examples do not work on Ubuntu, so it’s a tough starting point.

Given that you have set an environment variable in bash or system wide using /etc/environment.
e.g.

set RUN_MY_SPECIAL_TESTS=true

Wrong way:

<profiles>
  <profile>
    <activation>
      <property>
        <name>RUN_MY_SPECIAL_TESTS</name>
        <value>true</value>
      </property>
    </activation>
    ...
  </profile>
</profiles>

Right way:

<profiles>
  <profile>
    <activation>
      <property>
        <name>env.RUN_MY_SPECIAL_TESTS</name>
        <value>true</value>
      </property>
    </activation>
    ...
  </profile>
</profiles>

Right way, if you only care that an environment variable exists. Not what it’s value is:

<profiles>
  <profile>
    <activation>
      <property>
        <name>env.RUN_MY_SPECIAL_TESTS</name>
      </property>
    </activation>
    ...
  </profile>
</profiles>

These are your friends when configuring your profiles and env properties:
mvn help:active-profiles
mvn help:effective-pom

Note, if you activate 2 or more profiles that all try to set the same property, the last profile in the list will be the winner.

Hope this helps.