Note:
* In this case all JUnit tests are filtered out (in the sense of skipping them) leading to solely empty JUnit XML report files that are skipped during processing of .
* Not sure if relevant, but our publish step failure condition is "current.errors + current.failures > 0".

This is the build log output:
------------------------------------------------------------
16:16:02,8 [publish-report-tests-integration@lab9:8811] INFO - Start generating report 'tests'.
16:16:02,9 [publish-report-tests-integration@lab9:8811] WARN - Input resource [c:\qb20\workspace\3.2.x\all\integrationtests\osgi.integrationtest.test\report\TEST-com.dynatrace.diagnostics.integrationtest.FirstDtdTestTest.xml] is empty. Skipped processing.
...
16:16:05,6 [publish-report-tests-integration@lab9:8811] INFO - Finished generating report 'tests' successfully.
16:16:05,6 [publish-report-tests-integration@lab9:8811] INFO - Start generating report 'testsuites'.
16:16:05,7 [publish-report-tests-integration@lab9:8811] WARN - Input resource [c:\qb20\workspace\3.2.x\all\integrationtests\osgi.integrationtest.test\report\TEST-com.dynatrace.diagnostics.integrationtest.FirstDtdTestTest.xml] is empty. Skipped processing.
...
16:16:05,8 [publish-report-tests-integration@lab9:8811] INFO - Finished generating report 'testsuites' successfully.
16:16:05,8 [publish-report-tests-integration@lab9:8811] INFO - Start generating report 'packages'.
16:16:05,8 [publish-report-tests-integration@lab9:8811] INFO - Finished generating report 'packages' successfully.
16:16:05,8 [publish-report-tests-integration@lab9:8811] INFO - Initialize overview data ...
...
16:16:06,3 [publish-report-tests-integration@lab9:8811] ERROR - Step 'publish-report-tests-integration' is failed.
    java.lang.NullPointerException
     at com.pmease.quickbuild.plugin.report.junit.JUnitPublisher.isStepFailed(JUnitPublisher.java:50)
     at com.pmease.quickbuild.plugin.report.junit.JUnitPublisher$$EnhancerByCGLIB$$8ddd0486.CGLIB$isStepFailed$2(<generated>)
     at com.pmease.quickbuild.plugin.report.junit.JUnitPublisher$$EnhancerByCGLIB$$8ddd0486$$FastClassByCGLIB$$3cc03690.invoke(<generated>)
     at net.sf.cglib.proxy.MethodProxy.invokeSuper(MethodProxy.java:167)
     at com.pmease.quickbuild.DefaultExpressionManager$Interpolator.intercept(DefaultExpressionManager.java:280)
     at com.pmease.quickbuild.plugin.report.junit.JUnitPublisher$$EnhancerByCGLIB$$8ddd0486.isStepFailed(<generated>)
     at com.pmease.quickbuild.plugin.report.engine.contribution.publisher.BuildReportPublisher.onAfterPublish(BuildReportPublisher.java:82)
     at com.pmease.quickbuild.plugin.report.junit.JUnitPublisher$$EnhancerByCGLIB$$8ddd0486.CGLIB$onAfterPublish$18(<generated>)
     at com.pmease.quickbuild.plugin.report.junit.JUnitPublisher$$EnhancerByCGLIB$$8ddd0486$$FastClassByCGLIB$$3cc03690.invoke(<generated>)
     at net.sf.cglib.proxy.MethodProxy.invokeSuper(MethodProxy.java:167)
     at com.pmease.quickbuild.DefaultExpressionManager$Interpolator.intercept(DefaultExpressionManager.java:280)
     at com.pmease.quickbuild.plugin.report.junit.JUnitPublisher$$EnhancerByCGLIB$$8ddd0486.onAfterPublish(<generated>)
    at com.pmease.quickbuild.plugin.report.engine.contribution.publisher.AbstractPublisher.run(AbstractPublisher.java:132)
     at com.pmease.quickbuild.plugin.report.junit.JUnitPublisher$$EnhancerByCGLIB$$8ddd0486.CGLIB$run$35(<generated>)
     at com.pmease.quickbuild.plugin.report.junit.JUnitPublisher$$EnhancerByCGLIB$$8ddd0486$$FastClassByCGLIB$$3cc03690.invoke(<generated>)
     at net.sf.cglib.proxy.MethodProxy.invokeSuper(MethodProxy.java:167)
     at com.pmease.quickbuild.DefaultExpressionManager$Interpolator.intercept(DefaultExpressionManager.java:280)
     at com.pmease.quickbuild.plugin.report.junit.JUnitPublisher$$EnhancerByCGLIB$$8ddd0486.run(<generated>)
     at com.pmease.quickbuild.stepsupport.Step.execute(Step.java:498)
     at com.pmease.quickbuild.stepsupport.StepJob.execute(StepJob.java:37)
     at com.pmease.quickbuild.grid.GridJob.run(GridJob.java:114)
     at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619)