The test suite runner project is the magic that makes everything come together and allows you to execute the test suite. If you fully understand how the JBoss Test Harness functions, and have a good grasp on Maven 2, then it's not to difficult to understand how the test suite runner project works. Regardless of your background, this guide covers what you need to know to get up and running by studying the test suite runner used to run the Bean Validation TCK against the Bean Validation RI, Hibernate Validator.

The TCK runner for the Hibernate Validator can be found in the hibernate-validator-tck-runner directory in the Hibernate Validator checkout. The dependencies of the TCK runner project for Hibernate Validator are listed in Table 10.1, “Bean Validation TCK Runner Dependencies”.

You can find all of these artifacts in the JBoss Maven repository.

You should substituate the hibernate-validator artifact from Table 10.1, “Bean Validation TCK Runner Dependencies” with your own artifact. You'll also need to replace the jbossas-container artifact if you are not testing your implementation on JBoss AS. The jbossas-container artifact contains implementations of the Containers SPI for the JBoss Test Harness for JBoss AS 7.

The TCK is executed using the Maven TestNG plugin. Maven 2 profiles are used to control the properties that are set at the time of the execution. For instance, the incontainer profile enables integration tests and disables standalone mode, changing the default settings.

As you have learned, when the test suite is executing using in-container mode, each test class is packaged as a deployable artifact and deployed to the container. The test is then executed within the context of the deployed application. This leaves room for errors in packaging. When investigating a test failure, it's helpful to be able to inspect the artifact after it is generated. The JBoss Test Harness can accommodate this type of inspection by "dumping" the generated artifact to disk.

If you want to write the artifacts to disk, and avoid executing the test suite, you can simply execute the main method of the class org.jboss.testharness.api.TCK. For example you could use a Maven profile that is activated when the dumpArtifacts command line property is defined:

mvn test-compile -DdumpArtifacts

The output directory where the artifacts are written is defined by the property org.jboss.testharness.outputDirectory.

Once the artifact is written to disk, you have an option of manually deploying it to the container. You can execute the tests in the artfact by requesting the context path of the application in the browser. If you want to execute an individual test method, specify the method name in the methodName request parameter (e.g., ?methodName=testMethodName).