Forked Tests
By default, Maven runs your tests in a separate ("forked") process. You can use the maven.failsafe.debug property to debug your forked tests remotely, like this:
mvn -Dmaven.failsafe.debug verify
The tests will automatically pause and await a remote debugger on port 5005. You can then attach to the running tests using Eclipse. You can setup a "Remote Java Application" launch configuration via the menu command "Run" > "Open Debug Dialog..."
If you need to configure a different port, you may pass a more detailed value. For example, the command below will use port 8000 instead of port 5005.
mvn -Dmaven.surefire.debug="-Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,server=y,suspend=y,address=8000 -Xnoagent -Djava.compiler=NONE" verify
Non-forked Tests
You can force Maven not to fork tests by configuring the forkMode configuration parameter.
mvn -DforkMode=never verify
Then all you need to do is debug Maven itself. Since Maven 2.0.8, Maven has shipped with a "mvnDebug" shell script that you can use to launch Maven with convenient debugging options:
mvnDebug -DforkMode=never verify
Then you can attach Eclipse to Maven itself, which may be easier/more convenient than debugging the forked executable.