Romain, to be honest the JUnit guys always wanted to make their own business and monopoly over the testing phase in Maven, which means using JUnit5 only, that's it.
I have been a JUnit4 developer since cca 2011 or so, and we know each other. If I say business then I really mean business and not only the word. Defining report schema and forking mechanism JVMs in JUnit5, these are still the same competition problems between us, and I say it's about the monopoly, which means who takes the control over these things takes full control over Maven testing and then Maven becomes completely dependent on some test framework which is the risk for Maven. This is the main problem but you wouldn't see this unless you have spent years and years developing both parties as I have. Making Maven strictly dependent only on JUnit5 is the worst decision ever, I am telling you! Btw, experienced Maven guys must know what a strict dependency means and the consequences too. We are still in the loop for years with deleting something because somebody has got a crazy idea in the morning, found out github/dev-factory or anything else, some tool or technology as many other, those tools which come and go every year. On Mon, Sep 29, 2025 at 9:09 AM Romain Manni-Bucau <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi all, > > I'd like to start a thread about potentially dropping surefire totally. > The rational is that surefire (and failsafe) are mainly an abstraction > layer on top of main test providers. > However, since JUnit5 the platform/engine is itself such an abstraction > layer and a runner. > > On another side, testng and junit4 are slowly getting abandonned - even EE > TCK started to move. > > In terms of additional features we do have the maven site integratoin - but > I doubt it is much used outside and to be honest it can be replaced with a > github/dev-factory link with more benefit these days. > > So overall I think we can converge by dropping surefire plugin in favor of > a thin wrapper of junit5 console runner ([1]). > > Short terms I'm sure Christian could help us getting something fast based > on its implementation ([2] - including a small surefire compatibility mode) > and long term it will reduce the maintenance cost we do have for a very > poor gain in current world (site and remoting are no more key features > thanks the CI and doc evolution). > > Wdyt? Is maven 4 the mometum to do it? > > [1] > https://docs.junit.org/current/user-guide/#running-tests-console-launcher > [2] https://github.com/sormuras/junit-platform-maven-plugin > > Romain Manni-Bucau > @rmannibucau <https://x.com/rmannibucau> | .NET Blog > <https://dotnetbirdie.github.io/> | Blog <https://rmannibucau.github.io/> > | Old > Blog <http://rmannibucau.wordpress.com> | Github > <https://github.com/rmannibucau> | LinkedIn > <https://www.linkedin.com/in/rmannibucau> | Book > < > https://www.packtpub.com/en-us/product/java-ee-8-high-performance-9781788473064 > > > Javaccino founder (Java/.NET service - contact via linkedin) >
