Maven surefire plugin is not using argLine property provided by Jacoco

Question

This question is more focused on understanding maven life circle than in solving a real problem.

We have a project with several maven modules. Both Jacoco and Surefire plugins are configured in the parent pom.xml as follows:

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.jacoco</groupId>
    <artifactId>jacoco-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>0.8.0</version>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <id>default-prepare-agent</id>
            <goals>
                <goal>prepare-agent</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
                <destFile>${project.build.directory}/jacoco.exec</destFile>
                <propertyName>surefireArgLine</propertyName>
            </configuration>
        </execution>
        <execution>
            <id>default-report</id>
            <phase>prepare-package</phase>
            <goals>
                <goal>report</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
                <dataFile>${project.build.directory}/jacoco.exec</dataFile>
            </configuration>
        </execution>
    </executions>
</plugin>
<plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.21.0</version>
    <configuration>
            <argLine>${surefireArgLine}</argLine>
    </configuration>
</plugin>

This configuration works well and the jacoco.exec files are created on the target directory when common goals are executed, for instance:

mvn clean install

or

mvn test

But if we execute the following commands the jacoco.exec files are not created:

mvn clean install -DskipTests
#other actions here...
mvn jacoco:prepare-agent surefire:test

Analyzing the logs with the -X option, surefire plugin indicates that it is going to use the argLine property as it is expected:

<argLine>${surefireArgLine}</argLine>

The goal jococo:prepare-agent generates the value for this variable correctly:

argLine set to -javaagent:s:\\m2_repo\\org\\jacoco\\org.jacoco.agent\\0.8.0\\org.jacoco.agent-0.8.0-runtime.jar=destfile=S:\\sources\\sofia2-s4c\\config\\services\\target\\jacoco.exec

But when surefire:test is executed it does not use the argLine property:

[DEBUG]   (s) additionalClasspathElements = []
argLine SHOULD BE HERE!!!!
[DEBUG]   (s) basedir = S:\sources\sofia2-s4c\config\services

We have solved this executing:

mvn clean install -DskipTests
#other actions here...
mvn test

Due to mvn test detect that there are no changes in the compiled classes this is efficient. But I would like to understand why the first approach does not work.

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 04 '22 at 11:35

The problem is the <argLine> of the surefire plugin configuration.

Solutions from https://github.com/jacoco/jacoco/issues/964:

Define user property <argLine>...</argLine>. surefire will pick it up. No need to use ${surefireArgLine}
Keep the <argLine> in the surefire plugin configuration, but write it as <argLine>@{argLine} ${surefireArgLine}</argLine>

See also https://stackoverflow.com/a/23605812/510583

Maven surefire plugin is not using argLine property provided by Jacoco

1 Answers1