Default profile in pom.xml not activated

Pasted email from mailing list explaining the problem. I've also ran "m2 projecthelp:active-profiles" and it doesn't show the profile as active.

—

Hi,

I want to allow cargo build users to override a plugin property. I have seen that using a <build> element is not allowed in a settings.xml file and Brett has suggested I use a <properties> element instead. However I also need to define a default value for the property that can be overridden.

Thus I have defined the following in my project's pom.xml:

[...]
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
<configuration>
<systemProperties combine.children="append">
<property>
<name>cargo.containers</name>
<value>${cargo.containers}</value>
</property>
[...]
</systemProperties>
</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
<profiles>
<profile>
<id>default</id>
<properties>
<cargo.containers>jetty4xEmbedded</cargo.containers>
</properties>
</profile>
</profiles>
</project>

I want cargo build users to be able to create a settings.xml file with the following for example:

<settings>
<profiles>
<profile>
<id>user-vmassol</id>
<properties>
<cargo.containers>resin3x</cargo.containers>
</properties>
</profile>
</profiles>
<activeProfiles>
<activeProfile>user-vmassol</activeProfile>
</activeProfiles>
</settings>

Is that the correct way to implement my use case?

So far, the issue I've had is that the default profile created in pom.xml is not used when I issue a "m2 install" command. I've read on http://docs.codehaus.org/display/MAVEN/Build+Profiles that naming a profile "default" will automatically activate it. Isn't that so?

If not how can I activate a profile defined in pom.xml by default?

Thanks a lot
-Vincent