GWT-Maven Testing Support

One special aspect of GWT-Maven to be familiar with is that it runs its own special test goal during the "test" phase in order to support GWTTestCase and GWTTestSuite derived GWT tests.

It's a long story as to why this is needed (having to do with classpath inspection and setup issues inside GWTTestCase/JUnitShell), but the regular Maven Surefire testing plugin does not work for GWTTestCase tests (at least not with any configuration we have tried, and we have given it a lot of effort).

Using this special testing support though, requires that you know a few key things, as outlined below:

GwtTest test name prefix filter

Because you will likely want to run BOTH Surefire and GWT-Maven based tests (for regular server side JUnit tests with Surefire, and for client model and controller tests with GWT) you need to distinguish these tests from each other. This is done using a naming convention.

By default GWT-Maven looks for test classes that are named GwtTest"Something.java - they START WITH "GwtTest" . Surefire looks for tests that are named Something"Test".java by default - they END WITH "Test" .

If you need to, you can change the default GwtTest prefix by setting the testFilter plugin property.

Look at the full source for the Simple sample and the Full sample projects for reference.

Invoking tests

The GWT-Maven testing support is NOT intended to be run standalone , rather it is bound to the Maven "test" phase. To get gwt:test to run, you should include the "test" goal in your plugin configuration executions, and you should invoke mvn test .

   <executions>
      <execution>
        <goals>
          <goal>compile</goal>
          <goal>test</goal>
        </goals>
      </execution>
   </executions>

GwtTest scripts

Each test that is named with the GwtTest prefix and picked up and run by GWT-Maven is turned into a script in the target/gwtTest directory and run. This is handy to know because you can re-run just these scripts for troubleshooting purposes. (This is the same MO as the compile and shell usage with GWT-Maven.)

Test results output

Because GWT testing is different and is not run by Surefire, it also has different output. As well as summary output to the console, detailed output for each GwtTest script ends up in the target/gwtTest directory.

Use GWTTestSuite padawan

GWTTestCase derived tests are slow. This is because the JUnitShell has to load the module for each test (create the shell, hook into it, etc). GWTTestSuite mitigates this by grouping all the tests that are for the same module (those that return the same value for getModuleName) together and running them via the same shell instance.

This is a BIG time saver, and GWTTestSuite is easy to use, so using it is a good idea.

Another tip for GWT-Maven and GWTTestSuite is to name your test suite "GwtTest*Suite.java" so that the test filter picks it up, but name the actual tests with a convention that neither GWT-Maven nor Surefire will pickup - something that does NOT start with GwtTest, and does NOT start OR end with Test. For example "GwtTstMyClass.java". This way GWT-Maven picks up the SUITE, and runs it, but does not also run the individual tests (and Surefire does not pick it up either).