Testing JDK 1.4 production code using Java 5 tests in Maven

Java 5 marks a huge step forward in the realm of automated testing. JUnit 4, for example, introduces many powerful new features based on annotations, such as flexible test names and parameterized testing. TestNG has had very cool annotation-based features since its first release. And Selenium 2.0/WebDriver also has some great new features based on annotations that make it much easier to create Page Objects. However there are still those of us who, usually for reasons beyond our control, need to deploy to a Java 1.4-based environment. So are you stuck with prehistoric unit testing tools and prehistoric testing practices? The answer is no - even deploying to an archaic JVM, you can still use these new features for your tests. Curious? Read on! In fact, it's not too difficult, once you know how. The first thing you need to do is to configure the compiler options for each phase, to ensure that your application source code is compiled for Java 1.4, and your test code for Java 1.5. This isn't too hard: you can do it by configuring the maven-compiler-plugin as shown here: ... org.apache.maven.plugins maven-compiler-plugin 2.3.1 java-1.4-compile compile compile 1.4 1.4 java-1.5-compile process-test-sources testCompile ...

Date: August, 02 2010
Url: http://www.java.net/blog/johnsmart/archive/2010/08/02/testing-jdk-14-production-code-using-java-5-test-maven

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