Our project is set up as follows: src/main/java src/main/resources src/tests/java src/tests/resources Some of the files in src/tests/resources are xml files which are used to generate JUnit source files. These are generated into target/testutil This value is set in our properties file as maven.clienttester.src.dir = ${maven.build.dir}/testutil <ant:path id="testutil.src.dir" location="${maven.clienttester.src.dir}"/> <maven:addPath id="maven.test.compile.src.set" id="testutil.src.dir"/> Now, calling the test:compile goal will compile the source files from target/testutil into target/test-classes This is good. However, test:test doesn't attempt to run any of these test files. test:test only runs the files located in src/tests/java, as defined in my project.xml file. This is not so good. Since I have source files for everything, I would prefer not to use maven.test.search.classdir property. test:test should honour the maven.test.compile.src.set variable, the same as test:compile.