How to specify an alternate location for the m2 folder or settings xml permanently

Question

I am using Maven 3 0  and my  m2 folder location is C  Users me  m2   However  I do not have write access to that folder  but I want to change the repository location from the one defined in the settings xml   Due to restricted access  I am not able to edit the settings xml to change the repository location   How can I override the values of my settings xml -or change the default location of the  m2 folder- without editing my C  Users me  m2 conf settings xml file

User · Answer

Below is the configuration in Maven software by default in MAVEN_HOME\conf\settings.xml.

<settings>
  <!-- localRepository
   | The path to the local repository maven will use to store artifacts.
   |
   | Default: ~/.m2/repository
  <localRepository>/path/to/local/repo</localRepository>
  -->

Add the below line under this configuration, will fulfill the requirement.

<localRepository>custom_path</localRepository>

Ex: <localRepository>D:/MYNAME/settings/.m2/repository</localRepository>

User · Answer

You need to add this line into your settings xml  or uncomment if it s already there     lt localRepository gt C  Users me  m2 repo lt  localRepository gt    Also it s possible to run your commands with mvn clean install -gs C  Users me  m2 settings xml - this parameter will force maven to use different settings xml then the default one  which is in  HOME  m2 settings xml

User · Answer

You can change the default location of  m2 directory in m2 conf file  It resides in your maven installation directory   add modify this line in   m2 conf  set maven home C  Users me  m2

User · Answer

Nobody suggested this  but you can use -Dmaven repo local command line argument to change where the repository is at  In addition  according to settings xml documentation  you can set -Dmaven home where it looks for the settings xml file   See  Settings xml documentation

User · Answer

It s funny how other answers ignore the fact that you can t write to that file     There are a few workarounds that come to my mind which could help use an arbitrary C  redirected settings xml and use the mvn command as usual happily ever after   mvn alias  In a Unix shell  or on Cygwin  you can create  alias mvn  mvn --global-settings  C  redirected settings xml     so when you re calling mvn blah blah from anywhere the config is  automatically  picked up  See How to create alias in cmd  if you want this  but don t have a Unix shell   mvn wrapper  Configure your environment so that mvn is resolved to a wrapper script when typed in the command line    Remove your MVN HOME bin or M2 HOME bin from your PATH so mvn is not resolved any more  Add a folder to PATH  or use an existing one  In that folder create an mvn bat file with contents   call C  your path to maven bin mvn bat --global-settings  C  redirected settings xml        Note  if you want some projects to behave differently you can just create mvn bat in the same folder as pom xml so when you run plain mvn it resolves to the local one   Use where mvn at any time to check how it is resolved  the first one will be run when you type mvn   mvn bat hack  If you have write access to C  your path to maven bin mvn bat  edit the file and add set MAVEN CMD LINE ARG to the  runm2 part    REM Start MAVEN2  runm2 set MAVEN CMD LINE ARGS --global-settings  C  redirected settings xml   MAVEN CMD LINE ARGS  set CLASSWORLDS LAUNCHER       mvn sh hack  For completeness  you can change the C  your path to maven bin mvn shell script too by changing the exec   JAVACMD  command s    CLASSWORLDS LAUNCHER         part to    CLASSWORLDS LAUNCHER  --global-settings  C  redirected settings xml         Suggestion Rant  As a person in IT it s funny that you don t have access to your own home folder  for me this constitutes as incompetence from the company you re working for  this is equivalent of hiring someone to do software development  but not providing even the possibility to use anything other than notepad exe or Microsoft Word to edit the source files  I d suggest to contact your help desk or administrator and request write access at least to that particular file so that you can change the path of the local repository   Disclaimer  None of these are tested for this particular use case  but I successfully used all of them previously for various other software

[maven] How to specify an alternate location for the .m2 folder or settings.xml permanently?

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