Controlling test execution based on dependency results#

By default, a test case will not run unless all of its dependencies complete successfully. This behavior can be modified by passing the result argument to depends_on().

Example#

Run a test case only when its dependency fails:

# Copyright NTESS. See COPYRIGHT file for details.
#
# SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT

import sys

import canary

canary.directives.depends_on("willfail", result="failed")


def depends_on_willfail() -> int:
    instance = canary.get_instance()
    assert instance.dependencies[0].name == "willfail"
    assert instance.dependencies[0].status.category == "FAIL"
    print("test passed")
    return 0


if __name__ == "__main__":
    sys.exit(depends_on_willfail())

depends_on_willfail will run only if the result of willfail is failed:

$ canary run ./depends_on/result
INFO: Initializing empty canary workspace at .
INFO: Collecting generator files from depends_on/result
INFO: Instantiating generators from collected files
INFO: Generating test specs from generators
INFO: Searching for duplicated tests
INFO: Resolving test spec dependencies
INFO: Generated 2 test specs from 2 generators
INFO: Caching test specs
INFO: Created selection 'distant-turtle'
INFO: Selecting test cases based on runtime environment
INFO: Starting session 2026-04-21T15-34-29.867278
INFO: Starting process pool with max 2 workers
Job                  ID        Status                                           Queued   Elapsed      Rank  
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
willfail             e4caa24   SUBMITTED                                                               1/2  
willfail             e4caa24   STARTED                                            0.3s                 1/2  
willfail             e4caa24   FAIL (FAILED)                                      0.3s      0.4s       1/2  
depends_on_willfail  1b394c0   SUBMITTED                                                               2/2  
depends_on_willfail  1b394c0   STARTED                                            0.0s                 2/2  
depends_on_willfail  1b394c0   PASS (SUCCESS)                                     0.0s      0.2s       2/2  
┌──────────────┬──────────────┬───────────────────┬─────────────┬─────────────┬────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Job          │ ID           │ Status            │      Queued │     Elapsed │ Details                                │
├──────────────┼──────────────┼───────────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ willfail     │ e4caa24      │ FAIL (FAILED)     │        0.0s │        0.1s │ Test exited with exit code = 1         │
└──────────────┴──────────────┴───────────────────┴─────────────┴─────────────┴────────────────────────────────────────┘
 2/2 COMPLETE, 1 SUCCESS, 1 FAILED, in 00:00:00.61                                                                      
INFO: Finished session in 0.67 s. with returncode 8
INFO: Updating view at /home/docs/checkouts/readthedocs.org/user_builds/canary-wm/checkouts/release-26.4.16/src/canary/examples/TestResults

Note

To execute a test regardless of the results of its dependencies, use result="*".

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