Maven - Skip building test classes

Question

Is there a simple way to not build the test classes?

mvn clean install -Dmaven.test.skip=true

skip compiling or skip executing? – Bozho Apr 07 '10 at 15:17 — Bozho, Apr 07 '10 at 15:17
I need to run jetty without compiling the test classes. – Apr 08 '10 at 15:29 — , Apr 08 '10 at 15:29

Daniel · Accepted Answer · 2014-03-08T06:08:16.073

149

According to the documentation on the Maven Surefire Plugin, -Dmaven.test.skip should skip both compilation and execution of the tests. By contrast, -DskipTests just skips the test execution: the tests are still compiled.

edited Mar 08 '14 at 06:08

answered Apr 07 '10 at 15:43

Daniel

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+1 I hate the naming, however. It's completely non-obvious to me why `skipTests` just skips *executing* the tests and `maven.text.skip` skips *compiling and executing* the tests. I always have to look up which one is which. – Joachim Sauer Apr 07 '10 at 15:47

score 21 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 25 '12 at 18:37

21

Just to be explicitly clear:

skipTests will compile anything in the <testSourceDirectory>, but will not execute them.

maven.test.skip will NOT compile any tests, but WILL execute any compiled tests that made their way into the <testOutputDirectory>.

So the behavior of the above 2 is opposite. Just wanted to point out that maven.test.skip doesn't skip compilation AND execution if test files are unpacked/copied/etc. into <testOutputDirectory>.

Also, depending on which version of Maven your using, there's also maven.test.skip.exec=true which additionally skips test execution similar to skipTests.

answered Jun 25 '12 at 18:37

johntrepreneur

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That is unfortunately not true, at least in maven 3.0.5 and maven-compiler-plugin 3.5.1. You can test it in every project containing tests: `mvn clean package -DskipTests=true && mvn test -Dmaven.test.skip=true` will compile the tests (because of the first package-execution) but not run them in the second command. Assuming standard directories, `target/test-classes` will contain all tests afterwards, but they have not been executed. – David Georg Reichelt Feb 12 '16 at 14:33
This is the correct answer and should be accepted as such – Artem Dec 01 '18 at 21:55

score 9 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 07 '10 at 15:37

9

Run a phase that doesn't include test-compile, for example compile.

mvn clean compile

answered Apr 07 '10 at 15:37

Pascal Thivent

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score 8 · Answer 4 · answered May 20 '13 at 22:54

8

I'm not an expert at maven, but what I use in my current project is:

mvn clean install -DskipTests=true

Depending on your use case using:

mvn compile -DskipTests=true

might work for you too.

answered May 20 '13 at 22:54

JimP

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score 1 · Answer 5 · edited Feb 12 '18 at 00:41

I found a work-around in another question, which actually overrides a plugin execution by adding the following snippet in your pom.xml by default:

<build>
  <plugins>
    <plugin>
      <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
      <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
      <executions>
        <execution>
          <id>default-testCompile</id>
          <phase>none</phase>
        </execution>
      </executions>
   </plugin>
  </plugins>
</build>

This seems to work but definitely does not disable phase but disables the default actions that a plugin defines at a specific phase.

Maven - Skip building test classes

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