behave-pool 1.0.0

Parallel test execution for Behave BDD via native ITestRunner.

behave-pool

Parallel test execution for Behave BDD via native ITestRunner.

Features

• Native ITestRunner — Registered via --runner= or behave.ini. Zero monkey-patching.
• Dynamic dispatch — multiprocessing.Process + Queue. Workers consume work units as they finish.
• @serial tag — Non-parallelizable scenarios run sequentially after the parallel phase.
• LPT load balancing — Historical durations for optimal work distribution.
• Timing persistence — .behave-pool-timing.json stores durations between runs.
• Ecosystem integration — Optional behave-priority, behave-modern-json-report.
• Zero heavy dependencies — Only stdlib multiprocessing + behave>=1.3.0.

Installation

pip install behave-pool

Quick start

1. Register the runner in your behave.ini:

[behave.runners]
parallel = behave_pool:ParallelRunner

1. Run Behave with parallel workers:

behave --runner=parallel --parallel 4 --parallel-scheme feature features/

CLI options

Option	Default	Description
--parallel N	1	Number of worker processes. 1 = sequential passthrough.
--parallel-scheme	feature	Parallelization unit: feature (scenario planned for future).
--parallel-balance	lpt	Work ordering: lpt (longest first) or fifo (insertion order).
--parallel-timing-file	.behave-pool-timing.json	Path to timing file for LPT balancing.

Usage

Feature-level parallelization

Each feature file runs in its own worker process. Workers are dispatched dynamically and consume work units from a shared queue.

# 4 worker processes, LPT balancing
behave --runner=parallel --parallel 4 features/

Serial scenarios

Tag scenarios with @serial to run them sequentially after all parallel work units complete:

@serial
Scenario: Database migration
  Given the database is empty
  When I run the migration
  Then all tables should exist

LPT load balancing

By default, behave-pool uses Longest Processing Time (LPT) scheduling. It stores historical durations in .behave-pool-timing.json and dispatches the slowest features first, minimizing total wall-clock time.

# Use FIFO ordering instead of LPT
behave --runner=parallel --parallel 4 --parallel-balance fifo features/

behave.ini configuration

All CLI options can also be set in behave.ini:

[behave]
parallel = 4
parallel-scheme = feature
parallel-balance = lpt
parallel-timing-file = .behave-pool-timing.json

Requirements

• Python >=3.11
• behave >=1.3.0

Documentation

Full documentation is available at https://mathiaspaulenko.github.io/behave-pool/.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md for setup instructions and guidelines.

Please review our Code of Conduct before participating.

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md for notable changes.

License

MIT — Copyright (c) 2026 Mathias Paulenko

Acknowledgements

• Behave — the BDD framework this library extends.
• Contributor Covenant — Code of Conduct.
• Keep a Changelog — Changelog format.