There is a special version of jmeter.properties which was created for unit tests only. Originally testfiles/jmetertest.properties was a copy of jmeter.properties with some settings changed to make it possible to run repeatable tests. However the property files have since diverged, which means that some tests may be running with the wrong settings. Also changes to jmeter.properties that cause changes to behaviour won't be detected. I think it's time to drop testfiles/jmetertest.properties and fix any problems that may arise by overriding just those settings which need to be overridden for a particular test.
+1 for this proposition. It is currently weird that tests use non default properties values.
Note: the test properties file currently defines the following: HTTPResponse.parsers=htmlParser authorization=authorization cookies=cookies htmlParser.className=org.apache.jmeter.protocol.http.parser.LagartoBasedHtmlParser htmlParser.types=text/html application/xhtml+xml application/xml text/xml jmeter.save.saveservice.idle_time=false jmeter.save.saveservice.output_format=csv jmeter.save.saveservice.thread_counts=false jmeter.save.saveservice.time=false log_file=jmeter-test.log log_level.jmeter=INFO log_level.jorphan=INFO not_in_menu=Remote Method Configuration,JNDI Configuration,JNDI Lookup Configuration,JNDI Request,Default Controller,org.apache.jmeter.control.DynamicController, org.apache.jmeter.protocol.http.control.Cookie,org.apache.jmeter.protocol.http.control.Authorization,org.apache.jmeter.config.LoginConfig,Header,org.apache.jmeter.protocol.http.config.MultipartUrlConfig remote_hosts=127.0.0.1 upgrade_properties=/bin/upgrade.properties user.dir=. xml.parser=org.apache.xerces.parsers.SAXParser The log_file setting does really need to be kept. Not sure about most of the other ones.
This issue has been migrated to GitHub: https://github.com/apache/jmeter/issues/3978