java - Get @CucumberOptions tag property using System.getProperty()

Question

I am running a maven project in Eclipse for my Cucumber tests. My test runner class looks like this:

@RunWith(Cucumber.class)
@CucumberOptions(
        tags = { "@Now" },      
//      tags = { "@Ready" },
//      tags = { "@Draft" },
        features = { "src/test/java/com/myCompany/FaultReporting/Features" },
        glue = { "com.myCompany.myApp.StepDefinitions" }
        )
public class RunnerTest {   
}

Instead of having to hard code the tags into the test runner, I am keen to pass them in using the .command file. (i.e. using System.getProperty("cucumber.tag")

However, I get an error when I add the line of code to the above test runner:

@RunWith(Cucumber.class)
@CucumberOptions(
        tags = { System.getProperty("cucumber.tag") }
//      tags = { "@Now" },      
//      tags = { "@Ready" },
//      tags = { "@Draft" },
        features = { "src/test/java/com/myCompany/FaultReporting/Features" },
        glue = { "com.myCompany.myApp.StepDefinitions" }
        )
public class RunnerTest {   
}

The error I get is: "The value for annotation attribute CucumberOptions.tags must be a constant expression".

So seems it only wants constants rather than a parameterised value. Anyone know a clever way round this?

Answer 1

You can use the cucumber.options environmental variable to specify the tags at runtime

mvn -D"cucumber.options=--tags @Other,@Now" test

This supercedes the tags already contained in the test code.