By default Groovy unit test cases generate java bytecode and so are just the same as any other Java unit test cases. One thing to watch is often Ant / Maven look for *.java files to find unit tests with pattern matching, rather than *.class files. There's an option in Maven to ensure you search for classes (and so find any Groovy unit test cases) via this property

maven.test.search.classdir = true

Once you've got this enabled you can use Maven goals to run individual test cases like this

maven test:single -Dtestcase=foo.MyGroovyTest

Most IDEs support JUnit but maybe don't yet handle Groovy (shame!:). Firstly if you compile the groovy code to bytecode, then it'll just work in any JUnit IDE just fine.

Sometimes though you want to just hack the unit test script and run from in your IDE without doing a build. If you're IDE doesn't automatically recompile Groovy for you then there's a utility to help you run Groovy unit test cases inside any JUnit IDE without needing to run your Ant / Maven build.

The GroovyTestSuite class is a JUnit TestSuite which will compile and run a GroovyUnit test case from a command line argument (when run as an application) or from the test system property when run as a JUnit test suite.

To run the GroovyUnitTest as an application, just do the equivalent of this in your IDE

java groovy.util.GroovyTestSuite src/test/Foo.groovy

Or to run the test suite inside your IDE, just run the GroovyTestSuite test with this system property defined

-Dtest=src/test/Foo.groovy

Either of the above can really help improve the development experience of writing Groovy unit test cases in IDEs that don't yet support Groovy natively.