Properly binding maven exec plugin to test phase - maven

Question

In a Maven project I use maven-exec-plugin to launch my Grunt tests. It goes like this:
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
<artifactId>exec-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.2.1</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<phase>test</phase>
<goals>
<goal>exec</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
<configuration>
<executable>cmd</executable>
<workingDirectory>${project.basedir}/src/main/webapp</workingDirectory>
<arguments>
<argument>/C</argument>
<argument>grunt --no-color test</argument>
</arguments>
</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
With that I can run mvn test and my grunt test task will be executed: if the tests pass, the maven build pass and if the tests fail the maven build fail. When some tests fail I have the following output:
............................................. 1 failing
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD FAILURE
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 3.496s
[INFO] Finished at: ** ** ** **:**:** CEST ****
[INFO] Final Memory: *M/*M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.codehaus.mojo:exec-maven-plugin:1.2.1:exec (default) on project *****: Command execution failed. Process exited with an error: 6 (Exit value: 6) -> [Help 1]
I would like to know if it is possible to have the 'usual' maven output for failing tests. Something like: Build failure, there are failing tests.
Thanks

Answer 1

Not easily. The build failure message shows the exception thrown by the failing plugin; in exec-maven-plugin's case, that will only ever be the report of the exit code. It won't consider anything else in the command's behaviour.
If you were determined, you could rewrite or extend exec-maven-plugin, or perhaps write something similar in Groovy to throw an exception with a more specific message.
(A grunt-maven-plugin exists, but it also delegates to exec-maven-plugin.)