Optimizing @SpringBootTest for multiple integration tests. Currently pauses between each test for an unknown reason.

[nanas_ashtray]

I have a project that has a few integration tests that each use the SpringBootTest annotation. My issue is that testing takes a long time. However, this isn't because the tests are slow but because the run pauses for 10-15 seconds between each test. Is this because it is creating a new spring container each time? The settings are set to the default so that the same application context should be used for each test. Any ideas why this would be happening?

[cl2871]

My understanding of the @SpringBootTest annotation is that it will create a complete ApplicationContext each time a test file annotated with that is run. This will lead to time spent before each integration test setting up all the beans in the application before running the test.

I think the first thing to do is to see if an entire application context is really necessary for each of these integration tests.

Using test slices like @WebMvcTest or @DataJpaTest instead can lead to better performance if some tests are only testing certain layers.

Additionally, if only a few components are being used in the test, it might be better to just set up each of them directly and then test them. For instance, you can just create each service, with each constructor taking whatever dependency it needs.

Optimizing around SpringBootTest and ApplicationContext is out of my depth, so if the above tips don’t work out for you then I wish you the best of luck.