you have too differents choices to avoid and skip tests with the release plugin
- The first is to pass as argument on cli to the release goal or phases by providing a -Darguments:
exemple: mvn -X -Darguments="-Dmaven.javadoc.skip=true -Dmaven.test.skipTests=true -Dmaven.test.skip=true" -P release-mode release:prepare
-The second is to perform thoses arguments on your pom.xml in the build like this:
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-release-plugin</artifactId>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.scm</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-scm-provider-gitexe</artifactId>
<version>1.9.4</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
<configuration>
<skip>true</skip>
<skipTests>true</skipTests>
<preparationGoals>clean validate</preparationGoals>
<arguments>-Dmaven.javadoc.skip=true -Dmaven.test.skipTests=true -Dmaven.test.skip=true</arguments>
<useReleaseProfile>false</useReleaseProfile>
<releaseProfiles>release-mode</releaseProfiles>
<tagNameFormat>TEST-@{project.version}</tagNameFormat>
</configuration>
</plugin>
Note that the second method override the first.
I recommanded you to prepare release first on a single action and then you can edit the release.properties file on the working directorie and look the exec.additionalArguments
properties if your arguments are there. It will look like: exec.additionalArguments=-Dmaven.javadoc.skip\=true -Dmaven.test.skipTests\=true -Dmaven.test.skip\=true -P release-mode
.
After you can perform the release.