Generate Code Coverage with JaCoCo and spring-boot-maven-plugin

Question

During integration tests I use spring-boot-maven-plugin to start my spring application:

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <executions>
         <execution>
             <id>start-spring-boot</id>
             <phase>pre-integration-test</phase>
             <goals>
                 <goal>start</goal>
             </goals>
         </execution>
         <execution>
             <id>stop-spring-boot</id>
             <phase>post-integration-test</phase>
             <goals>
                 <goal>stop</goal>
             </goals>
         </execution>
     </executions>
</plugin>

Now I would like to add JaCoCo agent to the exection but adding it to the configuration as agent or jvmarguments didn't work. When starting I always see:

[INFO] --- spring-boot-maven-plugin:2.2.4.RELEASE:start (start-spring-boot) @ tosca-ui ---
[INFO] Attaching agents: []

How can I use JaCoCo with spring-boot-maven-plugin?

Answer 1

By default Spring Boot Maven plugin creates a fork and the agent configuration has to be explicitly specified. It can be done through setting <agents><agent>...</agent></agents> configuration property in Spring Boot Maven plugin BUT it does not work with Jacoco since there is no idiomatic way to find out what's the exact path to the agent jar file.

Instead you can pass argLine variable set by Jacoco to Spring Boot Maven plugin JVM arguments:

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <configuration>
        <jvmArguments>${argLine}</jvmArguments>
    </configuration>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <id>start-spring-boot</id>
            <phase>pre-integration-test</phase>
            <goals>
                <goal>start</goal>
            </goals>
        </execution>
        <execution>
            <id>stop-spring-boot</id>
            <phase>post-integration-test</phase>
            <goals>
                <goal>stop</goal>
            </goals>
        </execution>
    </executions>
</plugin>

Since quite a few Maven plugins have to be configured to make it work, just to avoid any confusion here's the complete pom.xml file:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 https://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <parent>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
        <version>2.2.4.RELEASE</version>
        <relativePath/> <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
    </parent>
    <groupId>com.example</groupId>
    <artifactId>jacoco-spring-boot-maven</artifactId>
    <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <name>jacoco-spring-boot-maven</name>
    <description>Demo project for Spring Boot</description>

    <properties>
        <java.version>11</java.version>
    </properties>

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
            <scope>test</scope>
            <exclusions>
                <exclusion>
                    <groupId>org.junit.vintage</groupId>
                    <artifactId>junit-vintage-engine</artifactId>
                </exclusion>
            </exclusions>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>

    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
                <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <configuration>
                    <jvmArguments>${argLine}</jvmArguments>
                </configuration>
                <executions>
                    <execution>
                        <id>start-spring-boot</id>
                        <phase>pre-integration-test</phase>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>start</goal>
                        </goals>
                    </execution>
                    <execution>
                        <id>stop-spring-boot</id>
                        <phase>post-integration-test</phase>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>stop</goal>
                        </goals>
                    </execution>
                </executions>
            </plugin>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-failsafe-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>3.0.0-M4</version>
                <executions>
                    <execution>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>integration-test</goal>
                            <goal>verify</goal>
                        </goals>
                    </execution>
                </executions>
            </plugin>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.jacoco</groupId>
                <artifactId>jacoco-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>0.8.5</version>
                <executions>
                    <execution>
                        <id>default-prepare-agent</id>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>prepare-agent</goal>
                        </goals>
                    </execution>
                    <execution>
                        <id>default-report</id>
                        <phase>verify</phase>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>report</goal>
                        </goals>
                    </execution>
                </executions>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>
</project>

With this, once you execute mvn clean verify you can find Jacoco reports in target/site/jacoco/index.html.

You can find complete sample project at jacoco-spring-boot-maven-plugin-sample