Intro
It is a collection of things found in the offcial maven documentation and postings to the maven user mailing list.
Build in properties

• ${basedir} represents the directory containing pom.xml
• ${version} equivalent to ${project.version} or ${pom.version}

Pom/Project properties
All elements in the pom.xml, can be referenced with the project. prefix or using pom. as prefix. This list is just an example of some commonly used elements.

• ${project.build.directory} results in the path to your “target” dir, this is the same as ${pom.project.build.directory}
• ${project.build.outputDirectory} results in the path to your “target/classes” dir
• ${project.name} or ${pom.name} refers to the name of the project.
• ${project.version} or ${pom.version} refers to the version of the project.
• ${project.build.finalName} refers to the final name of the file created when the built project is packaged

Local user settings
Similarly, values in the user’s settings.xml can be referenced using property names with settings. prefix.

• ${settings.localRepository} refers to the path of the user’s local repository.
• ${maven.repo.local} also works for backward compatibility with maven1 ??

Environment variables
Environment variables can be referenced using the env prefix

• ${env.M2_HOME} returns the Maven2 installation path.
• ${java.home} specifies the path to the current JRE_HOME environment use with relative paths to get for example:
  ${java.home}../bin/java.exe

Java system properties
All Java System Properties defined by the JVM.
Custom properties in the POM
User defined properties in the pom.xml.
…
hello
…

• ${my.filter.value} will result in hello if you inserted the above XML fragment in your pom.xml

Parent Project variables
How can parent project variables be accessed?
You can use the prefix: ${project.parent}.
A good way to determine possible variables is to have a look directly at the API. I’m currently using Maven 2.2.1, and to access the Parent you can use ${project.parent}. This will return an org.apache.maven.project.MavenProject instance.
To access the parent version: ${parent.version}.
Reflection Properties
The pattern ${someX.someY.someZ} can simply sometimes mean getSomeX().getSomeY().getSomeZ(). Thus, properties such as ${project.build.directory} is translated to getProject().getBuild().getDirectory().
List of Maven Properties

project (from [1])
o project.distributionManagementArtifactRepository
o project.artifact
o project.parent
o project.file
o project.artifacts
o project.parentArtifact
o project.pluginArtifacts
o project.remoteArtifactRepositories
o project.pluginArtifactRepositories
o project.attachedArtifact
* settings (from [2])
o settings.offilne
o settings.interactive
* rootless (from [3])
o localRepository
o reactorProjects
* java properties (from [4])
o java.version
o java.vendor
o java.vendor.url
o java.home
o java.vm.specification.version
o java.vm.specification.vendor
o java.vm.specification.name
o java.vm.version
o java.vm.vendor
o java.vm.name
o java.specification.version
o java.specification.vendor
o java.specification.name
o java.class.version
o java.class.path
o java.library.path
o java.io.tmpdir
o java.compiler
o java.ext.dirs
o os.name
o os.arch
o os.version
o file.separator
o path.separator
o line.separator
o user.name
o user.home
o user.dir