title: What is the best way to externalize properties in pom.xml
body: <p>I have a few mvn projects with almost the same properties. What is the best way to externalize these properties so i dont have them duplicated.</p>
  
  <p>First the properties:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;properties&gt;
      &lt;!-- LOMBOK version --&gt;
      &lt;lombok.version&gt;1.16.4&lt;/lombok.version&gt;
      &lt;!-- LOGGING versions --&gt;
      &lt;slf4j.version&gt;1.6.4&lt;/slf4j.version&gt;
      &lt;log4j.version&gt;1.2.16&lt;/log4j.version&gt;
      &lt;!-- MAVEN COMPILER PLUGIN version --&gt;
      &lt;maven-compiler-plugin.version&gt;3.3&lt;/maven-compiler-plugin.version&gt;
      &lt;maven-compiler-plugin.source.version&gt;1.7&lt;/maven-compiler-plugin.source.version&gt;
      &lt;maven-compiler-plugin.target.version&gt;1.7&lt;/maven-compiler-plugin.target.version&gt;
      &lt;maven-compiler-plugin.compilerVersion&gt;1.7&lt;/maven-compiler-plugin.compilerVersion&gt;
  &lt;/properties&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Then dependenciesManagement:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;dependencyManagement&gt;
  
      &lt;dependencies&gt;
          &lt;!-- LOMBOK DEPENDENCIES --&gt;
          &lt;dependency&gt;
              &lt;groupId&gt;org.projectlombok&lt;/groupId&gt;
              &lt;artifactId&gt;lombok&lt;/artifactId&gt;
              &lt;version&gt;${lombok.version}&lt;/version&gt;
          &lt;/dependency&gt;
          &lt;!-- LOGGING DEPENDENCIES --&gt;
          &lt;dependency&gt;
              &lt;groupId&gt;org.slf4j&lt;/groupId&gt;
              &lt;artifactId&gt;slf4j-log4j12&lt;/artifactId&gt;
              &lt;version&gt;${slf4j.version}&lt;/version&gt;
          &lt;/dependency&gt;
  
          &lt;dependency&gt;
              &lt;groupId&gt;org.slf4j&lt;/groupId&gt;
              &lt;artifactId&gt;slf4j-api&lt;/artifactId&gt;
              &lt;version&gt;${slf4j.version}&lt;/version&gt;
          &lt;/dependency&gt;
          &lt;!-- LOGGING DEPENDENCIES - LOG4J --&gt;
          &lt;dependency&gt;
              &lt;groupId&gt;log4j&lt;/groupId&gt;
              &lt;artifactId&gt;log4j&lt;/artifactId&gt;
              &lt;version&gt;${log4j.version}&lt;/version&gt;
          &lt;/dependency&gt;           
  
  &lt;/dependencyManagement&gt;
  </code></pre>