If I @Ignore a test class in JUnit4, does @BeforeClass still run?

unit-testing maven junit surefire
Coderer picture Coderer · Sep 23, 2011 · Viewed 15.3k times · Source

Quick background: I've been hunting down a Maven / Surefire test-running problem for days now, and I've narrowed it down to a small number suspect of tests. The behavior I'm seeing is insane. I start with mvn clean test: 250 tests run, 0 skipped. Now, I move the suspect test into src/test/java and try again: 146 tests run, 0 skipped! The output of Maven gives no clue that other tests aren't being run, even with the -X flag.

That brings me to my question: the reason I call the test 'suspect' is that the whole class is decorated with @Ignore, so I would imagine that including it in my test sources should have no effect at all. Then it occurred to me -- those classes have @BeforeClass/@AfterClass methods that manage a dummy Zookeeper server. It's resulted in wonky behavior before, which is why we have the tests @Ignored.

If JUnit is running the before/after code but ignoring the tests, I have no idea what might happen (but it'd probably be super bad). Is this happening? Is this supposed to happen? If so, how am I supposed to say "for reference, here's a test that should work but needs fixing" when it includes @BeforeClass / @AfterClass? Also of substantial interest: what the hell is this doing to Surefire / Maven, that it causes unrelated tests to fall off the face of the Earth?

Answer

Matthew Farwell picture Matthew Farwell · Sep 24, 2011

If you have a test with the @Ignore annotation, then it is normal behaviour for the @BeforeClass & @AfterClass to get run, whether or not all of the tests are @Ignored.

If, however, the Class has an @Ignore annotation, then the @BeforeClass & @AfterClass don't get run.

For maven, if you don't want to run any tests in a particular class, then you have to ignore them in surefire or failsafe. Add this to the maven configuration (see Maven Surefire Plugin)

<excludes>
 <exclude>**/FoobarTest.class</exclude>
</excludes>

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