Spring profiles are powerful tools to run the same application with different configurations.

There are several ways to activate profile(s) we want to use.

Standalone applications

For packaged applications, one of them is using spring.profiles.active property.

As -D argument:

java -Dspring.profiles.active=xyz -jar demo-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar
...
2019-12-13 19:24:58.058  INFO 12425 --- [ ] DemoApplication : 
The following profiles are active: xyz

Or as ENV variable (underscores instead of dots, as dots are illegal in env variables):

export spring_profiles_active=qwe
java -jar demo-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar
2019-12-13 19:28:47.777  INFO 12571 --- [ ] DemoApplication : 
The following profiles are active: qwe

Maven mvn spring-boot:run problem

But if you want to run same application with mvn spring-boot:run and -D parameter, it doesn’t work:

mvn spring-boot:run -Dspring.profiles.active=foo
2019-12-13 19:42:35.489  INFO 12952 --- [ ] DemoApplication : 
No active profile set, falling back to default profiles: default

Maven mvn spring-boot:run solution

To fix it we have to pass profile name in parameter with other name - spring-boot.run.profiles:

mvn spring-boot:run -Dspring-boot.run.profiles=foo
2019-12-13 19:48:29.587  INFO 13059 --- [ ] DemoApplication : 
The following profiles are active: foo

For multiple profiles separate them with a comma:

mvn spring-boot:run -Dspring-boot.run.profiles=abc,def

Option with exported ENV variable works without modifications.

Why isn’t it working

Spring Boot Maven plugin by default forks application we are running and all argument we passed to application are lost. With spring-boot.run.profiles we pass it to plugin and it knowns how to set expected profile in app.

If we disable forking:

<plugins>
	<plugin>
		<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
		<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
		<configuration>
			<fork>false</fork>
		</configuration>
	</plugin>
</plugins>

and run with spring.profiles.active parameter, it will work:

mvn spring-boot:run -Dspring.profiles.active=foo
2019-12-13 19:42:35.489  INFO 12952 --- [ ] DemoApplication : 
The following profiles are active: foo