You might want to update the documentation at http://www.eclemma.org/jacoco/trunk/doc/prepare-agent-mojo.html
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
<configuration>
<!-- Do not define argLine here! -->
</configuration>
</plugin>
Indeed, it seems to properly work while defining argLine within the configuration tag using the @{...} syntax: http://maven.apache.org/surefire/maven-surefire-plugin/test-mojo.html#argLine
Regards,
David RACODON