If argument in maven Surefire plugin, skip E2E tests - maven

Question

I couldn't seem to find anything on this but I'm curious if I can pass an argument during runtime to skip all of our projects E2E tests.
Is there anyway for me to do something like the segregated exclude block in the following pom example?
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
<configuration>
<argLine>${argLine}</argLine>
<excludes>
<exclude unless="${skip.E2E.tests}> **/*E2E*.java</exclude>
<exclude>**/IT*.java</exclude>
</excludes>
</configuration>
</plugin>
Then I could just call mvn clean install -Dskip.E2E.tests=true. Anybody seen anything like this?
I suppose I could do something like...
<exclude>${name.of.tests.to.exclude}</exclude>
and then mvn clean install -Dname.of.tests.to.exclude=**/*E2E*.javabut I would prefer to get an easy true or false argument to set rather than this in case some of the tests I want to skip do not include E2E and I need to add them to a list.

Answer 1

It's hard to tell just from the snippet of your pom that you are showing, but it looks like you are using surefire for both your unit and your e2e tests. Instead, you should consider using the failsafe plugin for e2e.
One benefit is that the e2e tests will run in a different stage so you get the behavior looking for by default. They are run during the verify stage of the project build. So, you can run mvn test to run unit tests only.
You can configure your project to use fail-safe like this:
<project>
[...]
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-failsafe-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.19.1</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<goals>
<goal>integration-test</goal>
<goal>verify</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
[...]
</project>
Run them using: mvn verify
Running mvn install -DskipITs will skip only integration tests, while still running unit tests.
And running mvn install -DskipTests will skip both integration and unit tests.

Answer 2

If you want to implement such a condition, you could use Maven profiles and have two configuration:
The default one as part of the normal build, not skipping the E2E tests
the profiled one skipping them
The profile could be then activated upon property or direct activation.
As an example you could have:
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
<configuration>
<argLine>${argLine}</argLine>
<excludes>
<exclude>**/IT*.java</exclude>
</excludes>
</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
<profiles>
<profile>
<id>skip.E2E.tests</id>
<activation>
<property>
<name>skip.E2E.tests</name>
<value>true</value>
</property>
</activation>
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
<configuration>
<argLine>${argLine}</argLine>
<excludes>
<exclude>**/*E2E*.java</exclude>
<exclude>**/IT*.java</exclude>
</excludes>
</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
</profile>
</profiles>
Note: the default Maven Surefire Plugin applying to normal build and then a profiled one.
Running:
mvn clean install
Will not activate the profile and your build will skip the tests. While running:
mvn clean install -Pskip.E2E.tests
or
mvn clean install -Dskip.E2E.tests=true
Will activate the profile and as such add the exclusion to the tests execution.
So this is exactly the scenario you were looking for, I presume.
Alternatively and as suggested by #AndrewEisenberg in the another answer, you could use the Maven Failsafe Plugin for different type of tests. The main two differences are that: it has different phase bindings AND when it fails, it does it in a safer way. As from official documentation:
If you use the Surefire Plugin for running tests, then when you have a test failure, the build will stop at the integration-test phase and your integration test environment will not have been torn down correctly.
The Failsafe Plugin is used during the integration-test and verify phases of the build lifecycle to execute the integration tests of an application. The Failsafe Plugin will not fail the build during the integration-test phase, thus enabling the post-integration-test phase to execute