Is It Possible to Set the user.agent Property from the Command Line Using the GWT-Maven-Plugin?

Question

I know that in my *.gwt.xml file I can specify the browsers I want the GWT compiler to compile my app for by adding this to it:

<set-property name="user.agent" value="opera,ie8, gecko1_8, safari, ie9"/>

Is it possible for me to set this property on the command line when I build my project through maven? I'd like to be able to do something like this when I'm developing locally on my machine:

mvn clean install -Duser.agent="opera,ie8"

Answer 1

EDIT: Starting with GWT 2.7, you can now pass a -setProperty user.agent=… on the command line; no need to tweak gwt.xml files any more. I'm not sure Mojo Plugin for GWT let you use that though, but the net.ltgt.gwt.maven Maven Plugin for GWT can.

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You can use filtering of your resources, but then it might make it harder to work from within your IDE.

In your gwt.xml:

<set-property name="user.agent" value="${user.agent}" />

Then in your pom.xml:

<resources>
  <resource>
    <directory>src/main/resources</directory>
    <filtering>true</filtering>
  </resource>
</resources>

and the default value for the property when you don't give it on the command-line:

<properties>
  <user.agent>opera,ie8,gecko1_8,safari,ie9</user.agent>
</properties>

Note however that this goes against The Maven Way™.