Add support for exclusive tests

[pytestbot]

Originally reported by: Barry Fitzgerald (BitBucket: pablojim, GitHub: pablojim)

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Allowing exclusive tests can give a quicker workflow when debugging a single failing test.

This would work like this - if I appended "only_" to any of my test functions only these tests in the current module would be run.

Would this functionality be accepted as a pull request?

See: http://tobyho.com/2012/09/12/better-tdd-workflow-via-exclusive-tests-in-jasmine-and-mocha/ for example of this in other test frameworks.

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• Bitbucket: https://bitbucket.org/pytest-dev/pytest/issue/585

[pytestbot]

Original comment by holger krekel (BitBucket: hpk42, GitHub: hpk42):

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Not into core i'd think. Did you try out:

https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pytest-cache

and the dynamic "--lf" "--ff" options?

[pytestbot]

Original comment by Barry Fitzgerald (BitBucket: pablojim, GitHub: pablojim):

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That's disappointing. Two questions:

Any particular reasons why this wouldn't be accepted into core?
Could this functionality be added with a plugin?

Thanks.

[pytestbot]

Original comment by Floris Bruynooghe (BitBucket: flub, GitHub: flub):

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Only had a quick look so far but isn't this also achieved by using e.g. @pytest.mark.exclusive on tests and then using py.test -m exclusive?

[pytestbot]

Original comment by Barry Fitzgerald (BitBucket: pablojim, GitHub: pablojim):

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Yes that is similar. This is just a convenience. See my link for some discussion.

[pytestbot]

Original comment by BitBucket: sscarwell, GitHub: sscarwell:

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If a change had to be made, it might be better to add regular expression support (e.g. passing the -k argument to re.search).
I think this would fix your problem, and would be more general purpose.

[pytestbot]

Original comment by BitBucket: sscarwell, GitHub: sscarwell:

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In your conftest.py, you could define pytest_collection_modifyitems(items) to apply any <debugMarker>, for all functions ending with _only.
Then you can run py.test -m <debugMarker>