solarengineer

Parallel execution must be explicitly enabled. When enabled, JUnit uses a fork-join thread pool, so tests may run concurrently on different worker threads. Because these threads are reused, a ThreadLocal value left behind by one test could be visible to a later test that happens to run on the same thread.

Setup and teardown methods can be used to create and clean up test-specific state. However, developers must still ensure that test data is unique to the test so that concurrently running tests do not interfere with each other. This uniqueness is unfortunately called "isolated", and has led to much confusion like in this thread. Certainly, the Test Execution Framework cannot guarantee data-isolation.

Parallel and randomized test execution can also help expose application-side problems involving shared or order-dependent state. Such failures may only appear when tests happen to exercise the application under the relevant ordering or concurrency conditions. When I was a junior developer teaching myself Java Servlets in 2000, I had to learn this lesson the hard way. A Test Execution Framework would not be able to guarantee any "isolation" of test data and of workflows if the server-side state is mis-managed by the tech stack and/or by the developer.

Kent Beck is co-creator [1] of the JUnit Testing Framework and has most definitely heard of static and global variables.