Cobertura+Failsafe: make "mvn clean site" proceed even if an integration test fails

Question

I have a Java8/Maven/Spring Boot project involving the maven-failsafe-plugin (in order to run integration tests in *IT.java, separately from unit tests in *Test.java) and cobertura-maven-plugin.

The issue is that mvn clean site fails to conclude if an integration test fails, while mvn clean site is fine if an unit test fails.

To reproduce this, I first added a src/test/java/app/FailingTest.java containing:

package app;

import org.junit.Test;

import static org.junit.Assert.fail;

public class FailingTest {

    @Test
    public void failingTest () {
        fail();
    }
}

and mvn clean site yields:

...
[INFO] -------------------------------------------------------
[INFO]  T E S T S
[INFO] -------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Running app.FailingTest
[ERROR] Tests run: 1, Failures: 1, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.063 s <<< FAILURE! - in app.FailingTest
[ERROR] failingTest(app.FailingTest)  Time elapsed: 0.005 s  <<< FAILURE!
java.lang.AssertionError
    at app.FailingTest.failingTest(FailingTest.java:11)
...
[INFO] Cobertura Report generation was successful.
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Then I renamed that class to src/test/java/app/FailingIT.java, and mvn clean site yields:

...
[INFO] -------------------------------------------------------
[INFO]  T E S T S
[INFO] -------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Running app.FailingIT
[ERROR] Tests run: 1, Failures: 1, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.031 s <<< FAILURE! - in app.FailingIT
[ERROR] failingTest(app.FailingIT)  Time elapsed: 0.005 s  <<< FAILURE!
java.lang.AssertionError
    at app.FailingIT.failingTest(FailingIT.java:11)
...
[INFO] --- maven-failsafe-plugin:2.22.1:verify (default) @ example-project ---
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD FAILURE
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

How can one fix this?

My pom.xml is as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <groupId>com.example</groupId>
    <artifactId>example-project</artifactId>
    <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <packaging>jar</packaging>

    <name>example-project</name>

    <parent>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
        <version>1.5.16.RELEASE</version>
        <relativePath/> <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
    </parent>

    <properties>
        <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
        <project.reporting.outputEncoding>UTF-8</project.reporting.outputEncoding>
        <java.version>1.8</java.version>
    </properties>

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-rest</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.data</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-data-rest-hal-browser</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-validation</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.h2database</groupId>
            <artifactId>h2</artifactId>
            <scope>runtime</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>junit</groupId>
            <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
            <version>4.12</version>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>

    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
                <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <!-- This is needed for the failsafe plugin, cf. https://stackoverflow.com/a/42128153/9164010 -->
                <configuration>
                    <classifier>exec</classifier>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-failsafe-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>2.22.1</version>
                <executions>
                    <execution>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>integration-test</goal>
                            <goal>verify</goal>
                        </goals>
                    </execution>
                </executions>
                <!-- This is needed to avoid a compilation error, cf. below -->
                <configuration>
                    <useSystemClassLoader>false</useSystemClassLoader>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
            <!-- This is needed to avoid a compilation error, cf. https://stackoverflow.com/a/50661649/9164010 -->
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>2.22.1</version>
                <configuration>
                    <useSystemClassLoader>false</useSystemClassLoader>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>

    <reporting>
        <plugins>
            <!-- This is needed to avoid a compilation error, cf. https://stackoverflow.com/a/51099913/9164010 -->
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-project-info-reports-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>2.9</version>
            </plugin>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-jxr-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>2.5</version>
            </plugin>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
                <artifactId>cobertura-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>2.7</version>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </reporting>
</project>

Answer 1

It's the maven-failsafe-plugin that's responsible for the build failure. The reason is clearly called out in your pom.xml as :

<goal>integration-test</goal>

If the test is really an Integration Test (IT), you must fix it or else if it is not an integration test, you can rename it to be categorized as a Unit Test(UT) but still fix it :)

Another poor way of getting rid of this error could be commenting out the failsafe plugin declaration all together in the pom.xml making it inactive. I would suggest to refrain from doing so though.