Profile Maven goals

In IntelliJ IDEA, you can profile several goals:

Maven Failsafe Plugin: failsafe:integration-test
Maven Surefire Plugin: surefire:test
Exec Maven Plugin: exec:exec and exec:java
Make sure to specify the mainClass argument for exec:java. You can do that in your pom.xml or in the Command line field in the corresponding run/debug configuration. For more information, refer to the Exec Maven Plugin documentation.

In the main menu, go to View | Tool Windows | Maven.
In the Maven tool window, right-click the goal that you want to profile and select Profile with IntelliJ Profiler.
IntelliJ IDEA creates a temporary run configuration that you can save and rerun later.

If you already have a Maven run/debug configuration for the required goal, you can profile it the same way as any other run configuration.

Limitations

Currently, there are several limitations for profiling Maven goals:

Profiling tools in IntelliJ IDEA do not support Maven profiles, executions, and versions. That is why, some complex configurations might not profile correctly.
Profiling of specific versions of the mentioned goals is not supported (for example: org.codehaus.mojo:exec-maven-plugin:3.0.0:exec).
You cannot profile the goals if they are configured in a way that more than one process is created during their execution.
Profiling of the exec:exec, surefire:test, and failsafe:integration-test goals is possible only in projects without modules. You can, however, profile a specific module provided that it has no sub-modules.
Profiling is not possible if there are certain arguments in a plugin configuration:
- commandlineArgs in the exec:exec plugin configuration
- debugForkedProcess in the surefire:test and failsafe:integration-test plugin configurations
If the Exec Maven Plugin configuration has <arguments> in pom.xml, the values in <arguments> are skipped during the execution of the exec:exec goal.

Last modified: 11 February 2024