`--deselect` doesn't work with absolute paths

• a detailed description of the bug or suggestion
• output of pip list from the virtual environment you are using
• pytest and operating system versions
• minimal example if possible

I wanted to do something like pytest /path/to/project/tests/* --deselect /path/to/project/tests/test_needsToBeAvoided.py, but this didn’t work. Instead I had to do pytest /path/to/project/tests/* --deselect tests/test_needsToBeAvoided.py.

bstaletic@Gallifrey pytest % pip list
Package               Version
--------------------- ----------
attrs                 19.3.0
beautifulsoup4        4.8.2
certifi               2019.11.28
chardet               3.0.4
codecov               2.0.15
coverage              5.0.3
entrypoints           0.3
flake8                3.7.9
flake8-comprehensions 3.2.2
flake8-ycm            0.1.0
idna                  2.8
mccabe                0.6.1
more-itertools        8.2.0
packaging             20.1
pip                   20.0.2
pluggy                0.13.1
psutil                5.6.7
ptvsd                 4.3.2
py                    1.8.1
pycodestyle           2.5.0
pyflakes              2.1.1
PyHamcrest            2.0.0
pyparsing             2.4.6
pytest                5.3.5
pytest-cov            2.8.1
requests              2.22.0
setuptools            41.2.0
six                   1.14.0
soupsieve             1.9.5
urllib3               1.25.8
waitress              1.4.3
wcwidth               0.1.8
WebOb                 1.8.6
WebTest               2.0.34
bstaletic@Gallifrey pytest % python -c 'print(__import__("pytest").__version__)'
5.3.5
bstaletic@Gallifrey pytest % cat /etc/os-release
NAME="Artix Linux"
PRETTY_NAME="Artix Linux"
ID=artix
BUILD_ID=rolling
ANSI_COLOR="0;36"
HOME_URL="https://www.artixlinux.org/"
DOCUMENTATION_URL="https://wiki.artixlinux.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://forum.artixlinux.org/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://gitea.artixlinux.org/"
LOGO=artixlinux

Steps to repro:

• mkdir ~/test
• cd ~/test
• echo 'def test_test():assert 1' > test_test.py
• pytest ~/test/*_test.py --deselect test_test.py - this works. The report says “1 test deselected”.
• pytest ~/test/*_test.py --deselect ~/test/test_test.py - this one doesn’t work. The test is being run.
• pytest . --deselect ~/test/test_test.py - this one doesn’t work either. The test is being run.

Additional info:

I have encountered this with python 3.8.0 and 3.8.1. I have not tried any other version.

[bstaletic]

https://github.com/pytest-dev/pytest/blob/d79179a239ac89b318be47c99ff965376d177257/src/_pytest/main.py#L326-L341

That’s the function that takes --deselect-produced tuple and filters the tests. colitem.nodeid is something like (based off the example in OP) test_test.py::test_test, which isn’t the absolute path. Then pybind just says if nodeid.startswith(deselect_tuple), which clearly is false if --deselect contains an absolute path.

Note: nodeid doesn’t depend on current working directory.

However, this logic is fine. What should be changed is how nodeid gets assigned.

[fdav10]

Two other issues that i’ve encountered with the --deselect argument are:

1. Windows file paths involving backslashes aren’t converted to OS-agnostic nodeid-like paths Sorry, i’ve just read the thread properly and see that these are meant to be nodeids not paths
2. The .startswith method used to match the deselect arguments against nodeids could be considered heavy-handed. In my use case I wanted to deselect a single test but the command ended up excluding multiple tests because they all started with a common string.

I’m happy to submit changes if these are thought to be bugs or otherwise undesirable.