[MNG-7914] Add doc for the new maven.properties file

apache-maven/src/assembly/maven/conf/maven.properties

@@ -1,6 +1,9 @@
 #
 # Maven user properties
 #
+# The properties defined in this file will be made available through
+# user properties at the very beginning of the Maven's boot process.
+#
 
 maven.installation.conf = ${maven.home}/conf
 maven.user.conf         = ${user.home}/.m2

src/site/markdown/configuring.md

@@ -0,0 +1,100 @@
+<!--
+Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
+or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
+distributed with this work for additional information
+regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
+to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
+"License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
+with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
+
+    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+
+Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
+software distributed under the License is distributed on an
+"AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
+KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
+specific language governing permissions and limitations
+under the License.
+-->
+# Configuring Apache Maven
+
+## System properties and JVM
+
+The `MAVEN_OPTS` environment variable contains parameters used to 
+start up the JVM running Maven and can be used to supply additional 
+options to it. For example, JVM memory settings could be defined 
+with the value `-Xms256m -Xmx512m`.
+
+JVM options can also be configured in the 
+`${session.rootDirectory}/.mvn/jvm.config` file, which means you can 
+define the options for your build on a per-project basis. This file 
+will become part of your project and will be checked in along with 
+your project.
+
+So for example if you put the following JVM options into the 
+`.mvn/jvm.config` file:
+```
+-Xmx2048m -Xms1024m -XX:MaxPermSize=512m -Djava.awt.headless=true
+```
+
+The content of this file will be appended to the `MAVEN_OPTS` 
+environment variable.
+
+Note that the above mechanism is handled by the Maven launch 
+scripts `mvn` and `mvnDebug` (`mvn.cmd` and `mvnDebug.cmd` on 
+Windows platforms).
+
+## User Properties
+
+Once the JVM is started, Maven uses _user properties_ to configure
+various parts of the system. The main entry point is the 
+`${maven.home}/conf/maven.properties` properties file. This file,
+along with any other files loaded from it (see below) are called
+_Maven properties files_ and are Java properties files with a 
+few enhancements. Contrary to standard properties file, those files 
+are UTF-8 encoded.
+
+### File inclusion
+
+Additional files can be loaded using the special `${includes}` key. 
+The associated value is a comma separated list of additional files to 
+include. Each item may be enclosed in quotes to gracefully include spaces. 
+Items are trimmed before being loaded.  If the first character of an item 
+is a question mark, the load will silently fail if the file does not exist.
+```
+${includes} = ?"${maven.user.conf}/maven.properties", \
+              ?"${maven.project.conf}/maven.properties"
+```
+
+### Property substitution
+
+Properties undergo the _property substitution_ process, so that any 
+value containing a `${xxx}` placeholder will be substituted with the value 
+of the `xxx` property. In addition to properties defined in the files
+being loaded, the following properties are defined:
+* `session.topDirectory`
+* `session.rootDirectory`
+* `maven.version`
+* `maven.build.version`
+* `env.XYZ` to refer to the `XYZ` environment variable
+* `cli.OPT` to refer to the `OPT` command line option
+* system properties
+
+The main `${maven.home}/conf/maven.properties` defines a few basic properties,
+but more importantly, loads the _user_ properties from `~/.m2/maven.properties`
+and the _project_ specific properties from `${session.rootDirectory}/.mvn/maven.properties`.
+
+## Settings
+
+## Extensions
+
+## Maven Command Line Arguments
+
+Maven is a command line tool, and, as such, accepts various command
+line arguments.  The `MAVEN_ARGS` environment value is used to
+provide additional arguments to Maven.  Those arguments will be
+pre-pended to the actual list of command line arguments.
+
+For example, options and goals could be defined with the value
+`-B -V checkstyle:checkstyle`.
+