I have an application developed in NetBeans/Maven that can be started via command line with: mvn exec:exec "-Dexec.executable=C:\\Java\\jdk1.6.0_33\\bin\\java.exe" "-Dexec.args=-Dlog4j.properties=... -classpath %classpath com.xxx.MyLauncher" -Dexec.classpathScope=runtime -Dexec.workingdir= Now I need to run the application through the standard java command line method, like: java -Dlog4j.properties=... -jar myapp-1.2-SNAPSHOT.jar Unfortunately this does not work in the same manner, as I get the following exception: opencard.core.util.OpenCardPropertyLoadingException: property file not found Questions: What is the difference between launching applications with the Exec-Maven-plugin and the standard java execution on command line? Is there an easy way to convert a Maven execution script to a standard command line? How to run the application succesfully?