pytest-skip 0.1.1

A pytest plugin which allows to (de-)select or skip tests from a file.

pytest-skip

This is a pytest plugin which allows to (de-)select or skip tests by name from a list loaded from a file.

pytest-skip expands upon the capabilities of the original pytest-select plugin by adding

• --skip-from-file option to skip tests instead of deselecting
• support to (de-)select or skip parametrized tests without needing to specify test instance qualifiers
• support for blank and comment lines in the selection files
• better integration with the pytest-xdist, plugin warning and error messages are passed to the master node with proper stdout or stderr outputs

Usage

This plugin adds new command line options to pytest:

• --select-from-file
• --deselect-from-file
• --skip-from-file
• --select-fail-on-missing

The first three expect an argument that resolves to a UTF-8 encoded text file containing one test name per line. Text file may contain blank and comment lines (starts from #),

The fourth one changes the behaviour in case (de-)selected or skipped test names are missing from the to-be executed tests. By default a warning is emitted and the remaining selected tests are executed as normal. By using the --select-fail-on-missing flag this behaviour can be changed to instead abort execution in that case.

Test names are expected in the same format as seen in the output of pytest --collect-only --quiet for example.

Both plain test names or complete node ids (e.g. test_file.py::test_name) are accepted.

Example::

$~ cat selection.txt
test_something
test_parametrized[1]
test_parametrized
tests/test_foo.py::test_other

$~ pytest --select-from-file selection.txt
$~ pytest --deselect-from-file selection.txt
$~ pytest --skip-from-file selection.txt

Install from source

git clone --recursive https://github.com/vlad-penkin/pytest-skip
# Run this command from the pytest-skip directory after cloning the source code using the command above
pip install .

Install in development mode

To install plugin in development mode run::

pip install -e .

Questions

Why not use pytest's builtin -k option

---

The -k selection mechanism is (currently) unable to deal with selecting multiple parametrized tests and is also a bit fragile since it matches more than just the test name. Additionally, depending on the number of tests, giving test names on the command line can overflow the maximum command length.

Version History

• v0.1.0 - 4/4/2025:
  • Initial release