Buildkite Test Collector for Python

The official Python adapter for Buildkite Test Engine which collects information about your tests.

Supported Python versions: >=3.10

⚒ Supported test frameworks: pytest.

📦 Supported CI systems: Buildkite, GitHub Actions, CircleCI, and others via the BUILDKITE_ANALYTICS_* environment variables.

👉 Installing

1. Create a test suite, and copy the API token that it gives you.

2. Add buildkite-test-collector to your project dependencies

Using uv:

uv add --dev buildkite-test-collector

Or add it to your pyproject.toml:

[project.optional-dependencies]
dev = [
    "buildkite-test-collector"
]

3. Set up your API token

Add the BUILDKITE_ANALYTICS_TOKEN environment variable to your build system's environment.

4. Run your tests

Run your tests like normal. Note that we attempt to detect the presence of several common CI environments, however if this fails you can set the CI environment variable to any value and it will work.

uv run pytest

5. Verify that it works

If all is well, you should see the test run in the Test Engine section of the Buildkite dashboard.

🏷️ Filtering Tests by Tags

You can filter which tests to run based on execution tags using the --tag-filters option.

First, mark your tests with execution tags:

import pytest

@pytest.mark.execution_tag("color", "red")
def test_red_feature():
    assert True

@pytest.mark.execution_tag("color", "blue")
def test_blue_feature():
    assert True

Then filter tests by tag using the --tag-filters option with key:value format:

# Run only tests tagged with color:red
pytest --tag-filters "color:red"

# Run only tests tagged with color:blue
pytest --tag-filters "color:blue"

Note: The --tag-filters option performs exact key:value matching. Only tests with the specified tag will be selected.

🎢 Tracing

Buildkite Test Engine has support for tracing potentially slow operations within your tests, and can collect span data of four types: http, sql, sleep and annotations. This is documented as part of our public JSON API so anyone can instrument any code to send this data.

This library supports the ability to transmit tracing information to your Test Engine output by using the new spans pytest fixture. See the SpanCollector documentation for more information.

You may also need to manually capture the data you wish to trace for your use case. For examples of how we've done this in our Ruby test collector, see:

• Instrumenting Rails to capture sql data
• Monkey patching to various libraries to capture http requests
• Monkey patching for sleep

Note: the Ruby test collector is the only Test Engine collector that automatically captures and transmits span data. This Python collector can transmit information, but data capture must be done manually at this time.

🔜 Roadmap

See the GitHub 'enhancement' issues for planned features. Pull requests are always welcome, and we’ll give you feedback and guidance if you choose to contribute 💚

⚒ Developing

After cloning the repository, install uv if you haven't already:

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

Then install the dependencies:

uv sync --all-extras

And run the tests:

uv run pytest

Useful resources for developing collectors include the Buildkite Test Engine docs and the RSpec and Minitest collectors.

👩‍💻 Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/buildkite/test-collector-python

🚀 Releasing

1. Open a new PR bumping the version number in pyproject.toml, make sure the PR title contains [release].
2. Get the PR approved and merged, this will trigger the release pipeline.
3. (Optional) In the event of step 3 failure, run .buildkite/steps/release-pypi locally with your own credentials.
4. Create a new github release for prosperity, you can create a tag as you create the release.

📜 License

The package is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

🤙 Thanks

Thanks to the folks at Alembic for building and maintaining this package.