Spring beans redefinition in unit test environment

I would propose a custom TestClass and some easy rules for the locations of the spring bean.xml:

@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration(locations = {
    "classpath*:spring/*.xml",
    "classpath*:spring/persistence/*.xml",
    "classpath*:spring/mock/*.xml"})
@Transactional
@TestExecutionListeners({
    DependencyInjectionTestExecutionListener.class,
    TransactionalTestExecutionListener.class,
    DirtiesContextTestExecutionListener.class})
public abstract class AbstractHibernateTests implements ApplicationContextAware {

    /**
     * Logger for Subclasses.
     */
    protected final Logger log = LoggerFactory.getLogger(getClass());

    /**
     * The {@link ApplicationContext} that was injected into this test instance
     * via {@link #setApplicationContext(ApplicationContext)}.
     */
    protected ApplicationContext applicationContext;

    /**
     * Set the {@link ApplicationContext} to be used by this test instance,
     * provided via {@link ApplicationContextAware} semantics.
     */
    @Override
    public final void setApplicationContext(
            final ApplicationContext applicationContext) {
        this.applicationContext = applicationContext;
    }
}

If there are mock-bean.xml in the specified location, they will override all “real” bean.xml files in the “normal” locations – your normal locations might differ.

But … I would never mix mock and non-mock beans, as it’s hard to trace problems when the application grows older.