Reporting test results

This section covers nextest's output format designed for humans. For output formats more suitable for consumption by other tools, see Machine-readable output.

Status levels

For non-output-related information (e.g. exit codes, slow tests), there are two options that control which test statuses (PASS, FAIL etc) are displayed during a test run:

--status-level

Which test statuses to display during the run. The default is pass.

--final-status-level

Which test statuses to display at the end of a test run. The default is fail.

There are 7 status levels: none, fail, retry, slow, pass, skip, all. Each status level causes all earlier status levels to be displayed as well, similar to log levels. For example, setting --status-level to skip will show failing, retried, slow and passing tests along with skipped tests.

Standard output and standard error

For standard output and standard error produced by tests, nextest attempts to strike a balance between a clean user interface and providing information relevant for debugging. By default, nextest will hide test output for passing tests, and show them for failing tests.

Displaying live test output

If you do not want to capture test output at all, run:

cargo nextest run --no-capture

In this mode, nextest will pass standard output and standard error through to the terminal. Nextest will also run tests serially so that output from different tests isn't interspersed. This is different from cargo test -- --nocapture, which will run tests in parallel.

Displaying captured test output

When --no-capture isn't used, nextest will capture standard output and standard error. There are two options that control the situations in which test output (standard output and standard error) is displayed:

--success-output

When to display standard output and standard error for passing tests. The default is never.

--failure-output

When to display standard output and standard error for failing tests. The default is immediate.

The possible values for these two are:

immediate

Display output as soon as the test fails. Default for --failure-output.

final

Display output at the end of the test run.

immediate-final

Display output as soon as the test fails, and at the end of the run. This is most useful for CI jobs.

never

Never display output. Default for --success-output.

These options can also be configured via global configuration and per-test overrides. Specifying these options over the command line will override configuration settings.

Options and arguments

For a full list of options, see the options and arguments for cargo nextest run.