Maven -DskipTests ignored

Question

I'm building a Maven project with following SureFire configuration:

<plugin>     <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>     <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>     <version>${version.maven-surefire-plugin}</version>     <configuration>         <includes>             <include>**/*Test.java</include>         </includes>     </configuration> </plugin> 

Problem is, that when I build it with mvn clean install -DskipTests=true, the tests are still being executed. What could be the problem?

I tried both -DskipTests(which is from the Maven website) and -DskipTests=true, which is added by IntelliJ Idea when I check "skip tests" checkbox.

I don't use any Maven settings.xml.

• Maven version: 2.2.1
• Surefire plugin: 2.3

EDIT If I comment out the SureFire plugin configuration, the parameter behaves as I expect to. What could be the problem with the configuration above?

Answer 1

Maven knows two types of parameters for skipping tests:

-Dmaven.test.skip=true  

or

-DskipTests=true  

The surefire-plugin documentation only mentions the first one, which you have not tried yet.

Answer 2

What you did should work. How to debug this further:

1. Run mvn help:effective-pom to see the whole POM that Maven will execute. Search it for test (case insensitive) to see if there is something odd.

2. Run mvn test -X to get debug output. This will print the options used to configure the maven-surefire-plugin. Make sure you redirect the output to a file!

   In the log, you will see

   [DEBUG] Configuring mojo 'org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-surefire-plugin:2.15:test' with basic configurator --> 

   and then, some lines below that:

   [DEBUG]   (s) runOrder = filesystem [DEBUG]   (s) skip = false [DEBUG]   (s) skipTests = false 

   These values mean that tests aren't skipped.

3. Are you using a recent version of the plugin? Check here. Maybe this option wasn't supported for your version.