Maven Surefire plugin "Error occured in starting fork, check output in log"

Question

I get the following error

BUILD ERROR
Error occured in starting fork, check output in log

when using Maven 2.2.1 and Surefire plugin 2.11 while running junit test cases.

How can I fix it?

Solution

You need to setup surefire plugin to use <forkMode>once</forkMode> like this:

<plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.5</version>
            <configuration>
                <skipTests>false</skipTests>
                <testFailureIgnore>true</testFailureIgnore>
                <forkMode>once</forkMode>
            </configuration>
</plugin>

Comments

[Naman]

the option is deprecated, any updated combination to solve the issue?

[Alban]

I fixed it with <forkCount>0</forkCount> (instead of the deprecated forkMode).

[Simon Ninon]

notice that forkMode once is NOT the same as forkCount 0.From maven.apache.org/surefire/maven-surefire-plugin/examples/…, the equivalent would be forkCount 1 with reuseForks true. However, seems forkCount 0 fixes the issue.

[Mançaux Pierre-Alexandre]

with this you loose jacoco coverage on sonar...any other ideas because i m in the same situation. thanks