Hi,
given the lack of extra feedback I'm going to implement
a junit3 based "one time setup" testing as described
in the previous threads.
I'm going to do so for trunk, commit, and then see
if I can get the same improvement for 1.6.x, since build
times are (intolerably) slow there too.
Afterwards I'll try to write down something about functional
testing in GeoServer... not a big document, but a general one
where other people interested in having documentation can add
the missing bits.
Cheers
Andrea