I want to switch from KindleIT's to Google's App Engine Maven plugin. When using the KindleIT plugin, I launched the GAE dev server right in the pre-integration-test phase. I shutdown the dev server once the integration tests are complete in post-integration-test. We are using the surefire plugin to run our unit and integration tests.

<plugin>
  <groupId>net.kindleit</groupId>
  <artifactId>maven-gae-plugin</artifactId>
  <version>0.9.5</version>
  <executions>
    <execution>
      <id>gae-start</id>
      <phase>pre-integration-test</phase>
      <goals>
        <goal>start</goal>
      </goals>
    </execution>
    <execution>
      <id>gae-stop</id>
      <phase>post-integration-test</phase>
      <goals>
        <goal>stop</goal>
      </goals>
    </execution>
  </executions>
</plugin>

I am doing that because I want to run integration tests agains the locally running GAE app. How can I do the same with Google's App Engine plugin?

<plugin>
  <groupId>com.google.appengine</groupId>
  <artifactId>appengine-maven-plugin</artifactId>
  <version>${gae.version}</version>
</plugin>

I want to use something like the

mvn appengine:devserver

goal. But this just launches the devserver in the foreground. I want Maven to launch the dev server in the background before the tests.

This isn't supported yet on the official plugin, but we're working on it and I'm hoping to get it into a snapshot build soon. I'll keep you posted, but this issue is where I'm tracking my work on that: https://code.google.com/p/appengine-maven-plugin/issues/detail?id=5