How to skip long running test in Go

23 Feb, 2020

Here’s a quick tip on how to skip long running tests in Go.

In your test function that you want to skip, add a t.Short() boolean check.

For example:

func TestLongRunning(t *testing.T) {
    if t.Short() {
        t.Skip("skip long running test")
    }
    // tests that will take a while to run
    ...
}

Then when you run go test, simply provide a -short flag to skip the test.

For example:

$~ go test -v -short

You can confirm this behaviour by checking test output. You should see skipping long running test in short mode message in the output.

For example:

--- SKIP: TestLongRunningTest (0.00s)
    main_test.go:27: skipping long running test in short mode
PASS
ok      github.com/faizmokhtar/toytesting       0.385s

That’s it. Hope you’ll find this tip useful.

References:

Go' testing Short documentation
[Stack Overflow - Skip some tests with Go] (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24030059/skip-some-tests-with-go-test)

#go