Phing and PHPUnit, just cant get even the most basic thing running - phpunit

Question

Using a composer-installed bin
I'm running a most basic task as follows:
<autoloader autoloaderpath="vendor/autoload.php">
<target name="asdf">
<echo msg="test"/>
<phpunit configuration="app/phpunit.xml"
haltonerror="true"
haltonfailure="true"
pharlocation="bin/phpunit"
/>
</target>
Now simply running this task:
phing -debug asdf
Will result in:
+Task: echo
-calling setter EchoTask::setMsg()
[echo] qwerqwer
+Task: phpunit
-calling setter PHPUnitTask::setConfiguration()
-calling setter PHPUnitTask::setHaltonerror()
-calling setter PHPUnitTask::setHaltonfailure()
-calling setter PHPUnitTask::setPharLocation()
#!/usr/bin/env php
Cannot open file "asdf.php".
Using a .phar
Using the same configuration except pharlocation:
+Task: echo
-calling setter EchoTask::setMsg()
[echo] test
+Task: phpunit
-calling setter PHPUnitTask::setConfiguration()
-calling setter PHPUnitTask::setHaltonerror()
-calling setter PHPUnitTask::setHaltonfailure()
BUILD FINISHED
No errors, but the phpunit tasktype doesnt start.
Unrecognized option
Had a third simple variant that seemed fine, which resulted in 'phpunit: unrecognized option -- p' that i sadly cant reproduce..
Versions
PU 5.7
Phing 2.16
PHP 7.1

Answer 1

I see you used PHPUnit 5.7. Did you use namespaces in your tests?
The current version of Phing is not compatible with namespaces like PHPUnit\Framework\TestCase, you have to use the old class \PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase instead.
The next Phing's release is going to be compatible with PHPUnit's namespaces (https://github.com/phingofficial/phing/issues/659). Meanwhile you can create phpunit.xml and add this to build.xml to run your tests:
<target name="phpunit" description="Run tests">
<exec executable="bin/phpunit" passthru="true">
<arg value="--configuration"/>
<arg value="app/phpunit.xml"/>
</exec>
</target>

Answer 2

I faced this issue when invoking Phing using Jenkins. The Phing plugin for Jenkins adds a -buildfile switch to the command calling Phing and when I removed this switch (running the command manually), my PHPUnit test suit was executed successfully. I recommend avoiding the Phing plugin for Jenkins and using a shell execution step to invoke Phing directly:
/path/to/php /path/to/phing/binary/