Tags

The tag parameter is now available on Describe, Context and It and it is possible to filter tags on any level. You can then use -TagFilter and -ExcludeTagFilter to run just the tests that you want.

Here you can see an example of a test suite that has acceptance tests and unit tests, and some of the tests are slow, some are flaky, and some only work on Linux. Pester v5 makes running all reliable acceptance tests, that can run on Windows is as simple as:

Invoke-Pester $path -TagFilter "Acceptance" -ExcludeTagFilter "Flaky", "Slow", "LinuxOnly"

Describe "Get-Beer" {

    Context "acceptance tests" -Tag "Acceptance" {

        It "acceptance test 1" -Tag "Slow", "Flaky" {
            1 | Should -Be 1
        }

        It "acceptance test 2" {
            1 | Should -Be 1
        }

        It "acceptance test 3" -Tag "WindowsOnly" {
            1 | Should -Be 1
        }

        It "acceptance test 4" -Tag "Slow" {
            1 | Should -Be 1
        }

        It "acceptance test 5" -Tag "LinuxOnly" {
            1 | Should -Be 1
        }
    }

    Context "unit tests" {

        It "unit test 1" {
            1 | Should -Be 1
        }

        It "unit test 2" -Tag "LinuxOnly" {
            1 | Should -Be 1
        }

    }
}

Starting test discovery in 1 files.
Discovering tests in ...\real-life-tagging-scenarios.tests.ps1.
Found 7 tests. 482ms
Test discovery finished. 800ms

Running tests from '...\real-life-tagging-scenarios.tests.ps1'
Describing Get-Beer
  Context acceptance tests
      [+] acceptance test 2 50ms (29ms|20ms)
      [+] acceptance test 3 42ms (19ms|23ms)
Tests completed in 1.09s
Tests Passed: 2, Failed: 0, Skipped: 0, Total: 7, NotRun: 5

Tags use wildcards

The tags are now also compared as -like wildcards, so you don't have to spell out the whole tag if you can't remember it. This is especially useful when you are running tests locally:

Invoke-Pester $path -ExcludeTagFilter "Accept*", "*nuxonly" | Out-Null

Starting test discovery in 1 files.
Discovering tests in ...\real-life-tagging-scenarios.tests.ps1.
Found 7 tests. 59ms
Test discovery finished. 97ms


Running tests from '...\real-life-tagging-scenarios.tests.ps1'
Describing Get-Beer
 Context Unit tests
   [+] unit test 1 15ms (7ms|8ms)
Tests completed in 269ms
Tests Passed: 1, Failed: 0, Skipped: 0, Total: 7, NotRun: 6