Gradle force test run if external file is modified - unit-testing

Question

I am using gradle for running my JUnit tests in a big project with different modules, where test caching is really valuable because I don't want to run every test for every code change. However I have several tests that read other module files, such as configuration files, that may cause the test to fail if they are changed, however because there is not a hard gradle dependency between the test and those files the test run is cached and therefore it might result in a successful run when in reality the code change of the configuration file might break the test.
I know that I can skip gradle test caching by using cleanTest but I don't want to loose the caching feature for every build I make. So I would like to tell gradle they depend on other module files, so if they change the test run must not be cached. Any suggestions of how this can be achieved?

Answer 1

You should specify the dependency to achieve it.
Assume the project structure looks like this:
.
|\__ module-a/
| |\__ src/main/resources/aa/bb/config.json
| \___ build.gradle
|
|\__ module-b/
| |\__ src/test/java/com/example/DemoTest.java
| \___ build.gradle
|
\___ settings.gradle
Add the dependency to module-b/build.gradle:
...
dependencies {
testImplementation(project(':module-a'))
}
The config could be loaded inside DemoTest:
...
class DemoTest {
#Test
void qq() {
InputStream inputStream = this.getClass().getResoureAsStream("/aa/bb/config.json");
...
}
}
Then any change to the config inside module-a would cause the tests inside module-b to rerun.