Add Test Start Timestamp to Surefire XML Reports

[kevinnammour]

New feature, improvement proposal

Summary

Add an explicit start timestamp field to the Surefire XML reports at both:

• testsuite level
• testcase level

The timestamp should represent the exact start time of execution for each test suite and each individual test case.

Problem Statement

Currently, Surefire XML reports provide:

• test duration (time)
• counts (tests, failures, skipped, etc.)

However, they do not expose the start time of:

• a test suite
• an individual test case

This makes it difficult to correlate test execution with time-based external signals, such as:

• CPU usage
• memory consumption
• I/O pressure
• JVM metrics
• system-level monitoring data

Proposed Enhancement

testsuite
    name="com.example.MyTest"
    timestamp="2026-01-29T06:41:12.345Z"
    time="12.345">
<testcase
    name="shouldProcessData"
    classname="com.example.MyTest"
    timestamp="2026-01-29T06:41:15.123Z"
    time="0.456">
.......

• Timestamp should represent test execution start time
• ISO‑8601 format (UTC) is recommended for interoperability
• Backward compatible: additive, optional field

Motivation & Use Cases
Fine‑Grained Performance & Resource Monitoring

Current Workaround
At the moment, we are using a custom JUnit listener to capture test start times and emit them separately.

[aghoussaini]

This would be useful for me as well. I'm considering exploring a possible implementation and would like input on the matter.

[olamy]

There are some ways to already do it with the current plugin without any code modification.

Have a look at this SurefireMojo parameter

    <statelessTestsetReporter implementation="org.apache.maven.plugin.surefire.extensions.junit5.JUnit5Xml30StatelessReporter">
      <disable>false</disable>
      <usePhrasedFileName>false</usePhrasedFileName>
      <usePhrasedTestSuiteClassName>true</usePhrasedTestSuiteClassName>
      <usePhrasedTestCaseClassName>true</usePhrasedTestCaseClassName>
      <usePhrasedTestCaseMethodName>true</usePhrasedTestCaseMethodName>
    </statelessTestsetReporter>

implementation attribute can contain your own implementation (must added as a dependency of the plugin declaration though).
If you want to provide a PR for this, due to heavy usage of surefire xml reports file in the community, those new fields should be be disabled per default.
I hope this xml fragment above gave you an idea about how to do it ;)

[kevinnammour]

Thanks for your reply @olamy

I tried to play around with the custom reporting, but unfortunately it won't have access to the start time as the stateless reported takes the wrapper entry as input and the latter doesn't have yet the startTime field. It's only included in the TestSetStats.

However, we opted for temporarily using our listeners and opened this PR for long-term use: #3261

It would be great if you can help us integrate it for it to be included in the 3.5.5 milestone.