{
  "id": 15914880,
  "title": "Spring Boot Integration Tests Are Slow and Messy: Here's How to Fix Them",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/21/spring-boot-integration-tests-are-slow-and-messy-heres-how-to-fix-them",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-10-21T16:49:16.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Dev.to",
    "slug": "dev-to",
    "url": "https://dev.to/heraldofsolace/spring-boot-integration-tests-are-slow-and-messy-heres-how-to-fix-them-4dnm"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Spring Boot integration tests can become slow and difficult to manage if not properly optimized. This issue often arises when multiple @SpringBootTest classes are added, each with slightly different configurations, profiles, or tests that are marked as flaky. The result is a suite of tests that takes several seconds to initialize and may produce inconsistent results due to context proliferation. To improve the performance and reliability of Spring Boot integration tests, it's essential to minimize the number of contexts being created and reused them across compatible tests. The Spring TestContext Framework can help with this by caching loaded contexts and reusing them when possible. However, cache key composition should remain consistent across test classes, avoiding changes to configuration classes, active profiles, property sources, or context customizers. Broad use of @DirtiesContext can also lead to context initialization problems, so it's recommended to use this annotation judiciously only when necessary. In Kotlin, applying the spring compiler plugin and using the @TestConstructor annotation with autowireMode set to ALL helps ensure consistent test fields and avoids the need for lateinit var fields. This approach allows for a single shared context for integration tests, providing a balance between thorough testing and performance optimization.",
  "summary": "Integration test suites can get slow without anyone deciding they should. Another @SpringBootTest here, some in-memory H2 wiring there, a flaky test \"fixed\" with a stray @DirtiesContext – and eventually the suite is the thing everyone quietly dreads before merging a PR, flaky on every other CI run, with nobody able to point to the one change that caused it. Spring Boot integration tests do real…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}