Easy to overlook, but you should include ellipses (...
) after a package
name, to also enable assertions on it and all its subpackages.
$ java -? 2>&1 |grep -A2 -e '-ea'
-ea[:<packagename>...|:<classname>]
-enableassertions[:<packagename>...|:<classname>]
enable assertions with specified granularity
So, use -ea:com.foo...
to enable assertions on com.foo
and all its subpackages.