1.4.0

Properties Maven Plugin 1.4.0 adds an encoding setting and key filtering for property files, can write the command-line properties, fixes nested placeholder defaults, and requires Maven 3.9.0 or later. This release is tagged 1.4.0; earlier releases used the properties-maven-plugin-x.y.z tag form.

✨ Highlights

• encoding sets the character set for reading and writing property files and URLs, for example UTF-8. Without it, .properties files are still read as ISO-8859-1, as the JDK does (#186, #92 by @pbarnes-tibco).
• includedPropertyKeys and excludedPropertyKeys on read-project-properties choose which keys are imported, matched before keyPrefix is applied (#187, #136 by @cowwoc).
• includeUserProperties on write-project-properties also writes the -D values from the command line, honoring the key filters (#184).
• Nested placeholders in default values such as ${defined:${user.home}} resolve without a stray } (#183, reported in #116 by @KyRobbins, whose test from #118 is kept).
• m2e now runs set-system-properties and write-active-profile-properties in workspace builds (#185).
• Maven 3.9.0 or later is required (#173). Builds on older Maven versions must stay on 1.3.1.
• Documentation moved from APT to Markdown (#182).

🚨 Removed

• Require Maven 3.9.0 (#173) @slachiewicz

🚀 New features and improvements

• Add includedPropertyKeys and excludedPropertyKeys to read-project-properties (#187) @slachiewicz
• Add an encoding parameter to the read and write goals (#186) @slachiewicz
• Add includeUserProperties to write-project-properties (#184) @slachiewicz

🐛 Bug Fixes

• Map all goals in the m2e lifecycle metadata (#185) @slachiewicz
• Match nested braces in default values of property placeholders (#183) @slachiewicz

📝 Documentation updates

• Convert the site documents from APT to Markdown (#182) @slachiewicz
• Add AGENTS.md (#179) @slachiewicz

👻 Maintenance

• Drop the unused JUnit 4 dependency from the acceptance POM (#181) @slachiewicz
• Keep Dependabot's Maven Wrapper updates on Maven 3.9.x (#180) @slachiewicz
• Apply the JUnit 5 best practices to the tests (#176) @slachiewicz
• Keep Dependabot on Maven 3.9.x (#175) @slachiewicz
• Migrate the unit tests to JUnit 5 (#174) @slachiewicz

🔧 Build

• Use the runners' cached Temurin JDKs in CI (#178) @slachiewicz
• Run CI on Maven 4 (#177) @slachiewicz
• Assign merged pull requests to the release milestone (#172) @slachiewicz
• Check dependencies monthly and group the updates (#171) @slachiewicz
• Run fewer JDKs on macOS and Windows (#170) @slachiewicz
• Use the shared ASF release-drafter workflow (#169) @slachiewicz

📦 Dependency updates

• Drop Hamcrest from tests (#167) @slachiewicz

Thanks to @slachiewicz and @KyRobbins.

Full changelog