diff --git a/README.txt b/README.txt
index 28a387764c3..3412f8ff169 100644
--- a/README.txt
+++ b/README.txt
@@ -15,3 +15,5 @@ dependencies.
 The tests do a lot of stress testing, and on some machines it is 
 necessary to set the file descriptor limit to greater than 2048
 for the tests to all pass successfully. 
+
+Bypass tests by building with -Dmaven.test.skip=true but note that this will not produce some test jars that are leveraged in other places in the build.