The particular use case here is setting the ${jdkName} variable to be used by the IDEA plugin are part of the generation of the IDEA project files. It would be nice to have this set across the board so that I don't have to specify it on the command line or in each POM (which would be very unwieldly). Chatting with John, it seems it would be reasonable only for Mojos that don't participate in the lifecycle as to ensure portability of the build. Mojos that are typically related to tooling are mojos that don't participate in the lifecycle like the IDE related plugins which are generally gear for a user specific setup. Here's an example of what might be nice to have in a settings.xml: <profiles> <profile> <build> <plugins> <plugin> <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId> <artifactId>maven-idea-plugin</artifactId> <configuration> <jdkName>/home/jvanzyl/jdk/1.5</jdkName> </configuration> </plugin> </plugins> </build> </profile> <profiles>