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

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.

Answer 2

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 3

it is not -DskipTests=true it is just -DskipTests considering you are using surfire version 2.3

so you run it as

mvn install -DskipTests

Answer 4

I'm not sure why the correct answer hasn't been posted yet. In older versions of SureFire the flag to compile tests but not run them is -Dmaven.test.skip.exec.

Answer 5

It's old question, but maybe my case help for someone.

So, -DskipTests/-DskipTests=true/-DskipITs/etc didn't work, and I didn't know why. I had <profiles> in my parent pom.xml and problem was in configuration of surefire/failsafe.

<profiles>
        <profile>
            <id>unit-test</id>
            <activation>
                <activeByDefault>true</activeByDefault>
            </activation>
        </profile>
        <profile>
            <id>integration-test</id>
            <properties>
                <skip.unit-tests>true</skip.unit-tests>
                <skip.integration-tests>false</skip.integration-tests>
                <skip.end-to-end-tests>true</skip.end-to-end-tests>
            </properties>
        </profile>
...
</profiles>

In plugins configuration I used like below:

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>${maven-surefire-plugin.version}</version>
    <configuration>
        <skipTests>${skip.unit-tests}</skipTests>
    </configuration>
...
</plugin>

This command didn't work:

mvn clean install -DskipTests -DskipITs

This works:

mvn clean install -Dskip.unit-tests=true -Dskip.integration-tests=true -Dskip.end-to-end-tests=true

Answer 6

Try the following configuration for your surefire plugin

<plugin>
    <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>${version.surefire.plugin}</version>
    <configuration>
        <skip>true</skip>
    </configuration>
</plugin>