My solution:

Considering that you have a program that depends on system properties:

package com.mycompany.app;public class App {    private static final String GREETING = System.getProperty("greeting", "Hi");    public static void main(String[] args) {        int x = 10;        System.out.println(GREETING);    }}

And you are running it with

exec:exec

:

mvn exec:exec -Dexec.executable=java "-Dexec.args=-classpath %classpath -Dgreeting="Hello" com.mycompany.app.App"

With some “inception magic” we can debug the process started by
Maven

exec:exec

.

Maven

Change your

exec:exec

goal to enable remote debugging. I’m using

suspend=y

and

server=n

, but feel free to configure the JDWP
Agent
as you please:

-agentlib:jdwp=transport=dt_socket,server=n,address=127.0.0.1:8000,suspend=y

This will not be passed directly to the maven JVM, instead it will be
passed to

exec.args

which will be used by

exec:exec

:

mvn exec:exec -Dexec.executable=java "-Dexec.args=-classpath %classpath -agentlib:jdwp=transport=dt_socket,server=n,address=127.0.0.1:8000,suspend=y -Dgreeting="Hello" com.mycompany.app.App"

IntelliJ IDEA

Create a

Remote

configuration (again I’m using a Listen strategy. You
should adjust it according to your process settings):

Now toggle your breakpoints and Debug your remote configuration. Using the
settings above it will wait until your process starts:

Finally run the

exec:exec

line above and debug your application at will:

---

So basically you need two “Run/Debug” configurations for this to work:

1. A Maven configuration for

   exec:exec

   with the system properties and JDWP agent configuration:

1. The remote configuration acting as a client.