Specify system property to Maven project

Is there a way ( I mean how do I ) set a system property in a maven project? I want to access a property from my test […]

You can set system properties in the Maven Surefire Plugin configuration (this makes sense since tests are forked by default). From Using System Properties:

<project>
  [...]
  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.5</version>
        <configuration>
          <systemPropertyVariables>
            <propertyName>propertyValue</propertyName>
            <buildDirectory>${project.build.directory}</buildDirectory>
            [...]
          </systemPropertyVariables>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
  [...]
</project>

and my webapp ( running locally )

Not sure what you mean here but I’ll assume the webapp container is started by Maven. You can pass system properties on the command line using:

mvn -DargLine="-DpropertyName=propertyValue"

Update: Ok, got it now. For Jetty, you should also be able to set system properties in the Maven Jetty Plugin configuration. From Setting System Properties:

<project>
  ...
  <plugins>
    ...
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.mortbay.jetty</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-jetty-plugin</artifactId>
        <configuration>
         ...
         <systemProperties>
            <systemProperty>
              <name>propertyName</name>
              <value>propertyValue</value>
            </systemProperty>
            ...
         </systemProperties>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
  </plugins>
</project>