@BeforeSuite not invoked when testing a single class

Question

I have a @BeforeSuite-annotated method.

public class MySuiteTest {

    @BeforeSuite
    public static void doSomethingVeryMandatory() {
        // say, boot up an embedded database
        // and create tables for JPA-annotated classes?
    }
}

public class MySingleTest {

    @Test
    public void doSomething() {
        // say, tests some MyBatis mappers against the embedded database?
    }
}

When I test the whole test,

$ mvn clean test

everything's fine. @BeforeSuite runs and @Tests run.

When I tried to test a single class

$ mvn -Dtest=MySingleTest clean test

doSomethingVeryMandatory() is not invoked.

Is this normal?

Answer 1

Your @BeforeSuite and @Test are in different classes. When you run a single class, testng generates a default suite.xml with only one class in it. Hence your @BeforeSuite is not visible to testng. You can either extend MySuiteClass in your testclass or create a suite file and run the suite file as suggested in comments.

Answer 2

Babulu's comment on the question works fine, just elaborating with examples for future readers:

1. Creating a suite in TestNG config XML:

<suite name="Suite Name" verbose="0">
    <test name="TestName">
        <classes>
            <class name="MySuiteTest"/>
            <class name="MySingleTest"/>
        </classes>
    </test>
</suite>

2. Invoking this config file using maven in pom.xml

<plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.12</version>
        <configuration>
            <suiteXmlFiles>
                <suiteXmlFile>config/testng.xml</suiteXmlFile>
            </suiteXmlFiles>
        </configuration>
</plugin>