Surefire is a test framework project. The Surefire Plugin is used during the test phase of the build lifecycle to execute your Java Unit tests
Use JUnit:
To execute all of the unit tests in a project, include JUnit as a test scoped dependency in your project's pom.xml:
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>junit</groupId>
<artifactId>junit</artifactId>
<version>4.5</version>
<scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
Your project should then store unit classes in the default location of
${basedir}/src/test/java
. The Maven Surefire plugin will scan these directory for JUnit tests.
To execute your unit test, you don't need to do anything. Maven's default settings are to scan${basedir}/src/test/java
for unit tests matching the pattern *Test.java
. To run your unit test specify the test phase of the default Maven lifecycle and run mvn test.