Using JUnit RunListener with Maven

Question

I want to use my own RunListener on my unit tests. So I've created the following class:

public class MyRunListener extends RunListener {

    public MyRunListener() {
        System.out.println("Creation of Run Listener...");
    }

    @Override
    public void testStarted(Description description) throws Exception {
        System.out.println("A Test is going to start");
    }

}

Now, in my pom.xml:

        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
            <configuration>
                <properties>
                    <property>
                        <name>listener</name>
                        <value>my.company.MyRunListener</value>
                    </property>
                </properties>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>

Now, when I run mvn test in my project, the output is the following:

Creation of Run Listener...

-------------------------------------------------------
 T E S T S
-------------------------------------------------------
Running xxx.SomeNewTests
        Test New #1
        Test New #2
Tests run: 2, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.109 sec
Running xxx.SomeErrorTests
        Test Old #1
        Test Old #2
Tests run: 2, Failures: 2, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.125 sec <<< FAILURE!

Results :

Failed tests:
  testOldOne(xxx.SomeErrorTests)
  testOldTwo(xxx.SomeErrorTests)

Tests run: 4, Failures: 2, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0

[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD FAILURE
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

So as you can see, my RunListener is created, but never called during tests execution.

What did I missed?

Technical information: Java 6, Maven 3.0.2, JUnit 4.8.1

Answer 1

As java doc main class of JUnit4:

JUnitCore is a facade for running tests. It supports running JUnit 4 tests, JUnit 3.8.x tests, and mixtures. To run tests from the command line, run java org.junit.runner.JUnitCore TestClass1 TestClass2 .... For one-shot test runs, use the static method runClasses(Class[]). If you want to add special listeners, create an instance of JUnitCore first and use it to run the tests.

To solve the problem, I had to write my CusomtJUnitCore, add my listener to it then run it by command line.

Config listener in maven-surefire plugin works well with TestNG

Answer 2

I've been trying to solve this for 3 days now and finally found my mistake: Since I was using the surefire-plugin for reporting purposes, i already had a reporting-section inside my pom.xml and I was trying to specify the custom listener there. Instead I had to specify it inside the build-section of my pom. So basically, instead of writing:

<reporting>
    <plugins>
        [...]
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
            <configuration>
                <properties>
                    <property>
                        <name>listener</name>
                        <value>my.company.MyRunListener</value>
                    </property>
                </properties>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
        [...]
</reporting>

I should've written:

<build>
    <plugins>
        [...]
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
            <configuration>
                <properties>
                    <property>
                        <name>listener</name>
                        <value>my.company.MyRunListener</value>
                    </property>
                </properties>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
        [...]
</build>

Maybe that was obivous and I just didn't get it before, but this solved my problem.

Answer 3

Make sure your surefire version is new enough, this was only introduced in version 2.7.

Other than that, if you build the RunListener in the first module of a multimodule build, it will not be available for surefire until after it is built. Pretty logical, but easy to forget.