Should test task configuration be optimized for dev mode?

[scottkurz]

The build.gradle configuration of test.dependsOn 'libertyStart' results in a good portion of the "lifecycle" being re-executed ever time tests are run in dev mode.

One particular issue with this is that the feature install processing takes a long time, even when all features have already been installed. (This is tracked in the liberty-maven-plugin at: OpenLiberty/ci.maven#1557, and there is an issue linked, opened against the Open Liberty runtime as well).

The reason we establish this task dependency is so that someone can simply do gradle test without having to know how to install/deploy/start etc.

I'm not sure there's a great way to satisfy the dual goals of providing a simple interface outside of dev mode, eg. in CI/CD, as well as a tighter test cycle within dev mode. It's possible we just have to pick one or the other and maybe document the issue.

Opening this issue to consider from this guide's perspective.