Question

In our “big build” (40+ modules), we have several modules that contain only tests.

When I give -DskiptTests to mvn, the tests are not executed.

But they are compiled, which costs up to a minute of build time.

How can I selectively turn off such modules when the option skipTests is set?

Answer 1

You’d have to organize your root pom such that the test modules are activated via a profile, and instead of using -Dmaven.test.skip to turn use -P!testProfile to deactivate them and hence skipping them.

Another thought is that you could just do:

<plugins>
    <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
        <configuration>
            <skip>${maven.test.skip}</skip>
        </configuration>
    </plugin>
</plugins>

I haven’t actually tried that… it should in theory work. I seem to remember that the <skip> configuration is on all plugins.