title: Specify system property to Maven project
body: <p>Is there a way ( I mean how do I ) set a system property in a maven project?</p>
  
  <p>I want to access a property from my test and my webapp ( running locally ) and I know I can use a java system property. </p>
  
  <p>Should I put that in ./settings.xml or something like that?</p>
  
  <p><b>Context</b></p>
  
  <p>I took an open source project and managed to change the db configuration to use JavaDB</p>
  
  <p>Now, in the jdbc url for JavaDB, the location of the database could be specified as the full path ( see: <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3231614/javadb-derby-path-to-database">this other question</a> ) </p>
  
  <p>Or a system property: <code>derby.system.home</code></p>
  
  <p>I have the code working already, but currently it is all hardcoded to: </p>
  
  <pre><code> jdbc:derby:/Users/oscarreyes/javadbs/mydb
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And I want to remove the full path, to leave it like:</p>
  
  <pre><code> jdbc:derby:mydb
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>To do that I need to specify the system property ( <code>derby.system.home</code> ) to maven, but I don't know how. </p>
  
  <p>The test are performed using junit ( I don't see any plugin in pom.xml ) and the web app runs with the jetty plugin. </p>
  
  <p>Specifying the system property in the command line seems to work for jetty, but I'm not sure if that's something practical ( granted some other users may run it from eclipse/idea/ whatever ) </p>