src/site/apt/index.apt

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 Introduction
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 Hervé Boutemy
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 2011-09-04
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 ~~   http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
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 ~~ http://maven.apache.org/doxia/references/apt-format.html


Maven Core ITs

 Maven Core Integration Tests provide tooling to test every aspect of Maven functionalities with any Maven version.

 This project has declared the following modules:

 * {{{./core-it-support/}Maven IT Support}}: Maven Integration Tests support tools, to completely decouple ITs from production plugins.

 * {{{./core-it-suite/}Maven ITs}}: The effective Maven Integration Tests suite.


* Core ITs and dependencies

 A good IT does not depend on external repos like central, it uses dedicated test plugins and test repositories.
 The default <<<settings.xml>>> used by ITs helps to enforce this by pointing central at <<<file:target/null>>>,
 which obviously can't resolve anything. This setup using a file-based dummy repo also helps execution time,
 because this repo produces (expected) <<<404>>>s much faster than a HTTP-based repo.

 The one place where access to central is desired is in the <<<MavenITBootstrapTest>>>
 ({{{./core-it-suite/xref-test/org/apache/maven/it/MavenITBootstrapTest.html}src}},
 {{{./core-it-suite/testapidocs/org/apache/maven/it/MavenITBootstrapTest.html}javadoc}}),
 which doesn't really test anything but just primes the local repo with any artifacts the ITs will need.

 So some care needs to be taken when introducing new dependencies into the ITs themselves or the support plugins.
 Many times the failures that we encounter are discrepancies between actual artifact consumption required and
 what is populated during bootstraping.