Skipping tests in some modules in Maven

Question

I would like my Maven builds to run most unit tests. But there are unit tests in one project which are slower and I'd like to generally exclude them; and occasionally turn them on.

Question: How do I do this?

I know about -Dmaven.test.skip=true, but that turns off all unit tests.

I also know about skipping integration tests, described here. But I do not have integration tests, just unit tests, and I don't have any explicit calls to the maven-surefire-plugin. (I am using Maven 2 with the Eclipse-Maven plugin).

Answer 1

What about skipping tests only in this module ?

In the pom.xml of this module:

<project>
  [...]
  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.4.2</version>
        <configuration>
          <skipTests>true</skipTests>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
  [...]
</project>

Eventually, you can create a profile that will disable the tests (still the pom.xml of the module) :

<project>
  [...]
  <profiles>
    <profile>
      <id>noTest</id>
      <activation>
        <property>
          <name>noTest</name>
          <value>true</value>
        </property>
      </activation>
      <build>
        <plugins>
          <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>2.4.2</version>
            <configuration>
              <skipTests>true</skipTests>
            </configuration>
          </plugin>
        </plugins>
      </build>
    </profile>
  </profiles>
  [...]
</project>

With the latter solution, if you run mvn clean package, it will run all tests. If you run mvn clean package -DnoTest=true, it will not run the tests for this module.