title: Maven : add external resources
body: <p>I am building an executable jar file with maven, meaning that you run it with "java -jar file.jar".</p>
  
  <p>I want to rely on user defined properties (just a file containing keys/values), during developpement phase I was putting my "user.properties" file in maven /src/main/resources/ folder.</p>
  
  <p>My property file is loaded with:</p>
  
  <pre><code>final Properties p = new Properties();
  final InputStream resource = IOParametres.class.getResourceAsStream("/user.properties");
  p.load(resource);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Now, I want to keep that file outside of the JAR and have something like this :</p>
  
  <pre><code>- execution_folder
     |_ file.jar
     |_ config
        |_ user.properties
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I tried many things with maven plugins like maven-jar-plugin, maven-surefire-plugin and maven-resources-plugin but I can't get it working...</p>
  
  <p>Thanks in advance for your help!</p>