Spring Boot fails to run maven-surefire-plugin ClassNotFoundException org.apache.maven.surefire.booter.ForkedBooter

Question

Running maven (3.5.2) build of a Spring Boot 2.0.2.RELEASE applicaton (generated by web initialiser with web dependencies) fails executing the maven-surefire-plugin saying just:

Error: Could not find or load main class org.apache.maven.surefire.booter.ForkedBooter

Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.apache.maven.surefire.booter.ForkedBooter

Why is this happening? Is it a problem in boot + surefire integration = a bug?

For reference, the dependencies that seem relevant are:

<parent>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
    <version>2.0.2.RELEASE</version>
    <relativePath/>
</parent>
...
<dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
        <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
...
<dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
</dependency>
...
<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

Answer 1

Workaround for the issue was to override Spring Boot's maven-surefire-plugin definition and set useSystemClassLoader to false. Read Surefire docs for more details

<build>
    <plugins>
        ...
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
            <configuration>
                <useSystemClassLoader>false</useSystemClassLoader>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>