title: per-user Maven properties
body: <p>In my Maven build I would like to be able to define default values (e.g. for database connection) in pom.xml, but I would like the user to be able to override these without having to modify <code>pom.xml</code> directly.</p>
  
  <p>By way of example, in an Ant build you can define default properties in <code>foo.properties</code>, but Ant will look for overrides for each of these in a <code>foo.$USERNAME.properties</code>. The latter is generally not checked into source control, which eliminates the problem of developers accidentally committing their overrides of the default properties. Does Maven offer a similar facility?</p>
  
  <p>To make the problem a bit more concrete, assume I have the following defined in <code>pom.xml</code></p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;properties&gt;
    &lt;db.url&gt;jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://10.10.10.10:1433/somedb&lt;/db.url&gt;
    &lt;db.driver&gt;net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver&lt;/db.driver&gt;
    &lt;db.username&gt;default_user&lt;/db.username&gt;
    &lt;db.password&gt;secret&lt;/db.password&gt;
  &lt;/properties&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Can a user override these properties without editing the pom.xml directly?</p>