parser.addoption has a buggy argument parser (relative path-like strings)

[themanifold]

If I provide an existing relative path to pytest via parser.addoption then I get the following error message:

ERROR: usage: pytest [options] [file_or_dir] [file_or_dir] [...]
pytest: error: unrecognized arguments: --var-file
  inifile: None
  rootdir: /home/user/workspace

This does not happen to a relative path that is non-existent.

If you add an equal sign (=) instead of a blank space, this error does not occur.

This is slightly confusing to me as I do not see why parser.addoption cares about whether we're passing in a file (I would have thought it was just deal with the string). And if it does care about whether something is a file, why is it OK with a nonexistent file?

A minimal bit of code that will reproduce this, conftest.py

def pytest_addoption(parser):
    parser.addoption(
        "--var-file",
        action="store",
    )

Place this in a folder with an existing relative file above it, e.g.:

foo.txt
test/conftest.py
test/bar.txt

Enter the test folder and execute pytest --var-file ../foo.txt and observe the error message above.

Running pytest --var-file bar.txt will not produce an error message
Running pytest --var-file ../notthere.txt will not produce the error message
Running pytest --var-file=../foo.txt will not produce the error message

Output of pip freeze:

pip freeze
atomicwrites==1.3.0
attrs==19.3.0
importlib-metadata==1.5.0
more-itertools==8.2.0
packaging==20.3
pluggy==0.13.1
py==1.8.1
pyparsing==2.4.6
pytest==5.3.5
six==1.14.0
wcwidth==0.1.8
zipp==3.1.0

lsb_release -a
LSB Version:	n/a
Distributor ID:	ManjaroLinux
Description:	Manjaro Linux
Release:	18.1.5
Codename:	Juhraya

python --version
Python 3.8.1

Note, observed this in pytest 5.0.1 as well.

[RonnyPfannschmidt]

at first glance this looks like this is not a initial conftest, i think pytest needs to warn more about plugin registration with the addoption hook when its already too late for that

if you move it one folder up it should work

[themanifold]

@RonnyPfannschmidt Sorry, I'm not super experienced with pytest (or confest). I'm not sure what you mean by your message.

I don't understand why pytest is trying to register a plugin when I use the addoption hook to create a unrelated flag.

When you say move "it" up one folder, do you mean confest? I can't really do that in my example because the file I'm referring to is not part of the test project - conftest belongs in the test folder IMO.

[RonnyPfannschmidt]

i mean moving the conftest up one folder, pytest no longer scans all of the conftests in all of the folders because people did horrid stuff, sorry about that one

[themanifold]

OK, I understand your work around, but why does putting an equal sign there make it work?

[RonnyPfannschmidt]

@themanifold with the =, pytest doesnt consider it as a existing path contributiong to finding the rootdir

this is a issue with finding the correct rootdir as only conftests in it are considered as initial conftests

if you cringe from the explanation thats natural, i also cringed when writing it (the horrors of bugfix collusion)

[adrian-arg]

I'm getting the same behavior
I'm building a little framework for a demo and I have the webdrivers in a folder called webdrivers.

If I use something like --driver_path webdrivers/chromedriver, it breaks with the error:

"ERROR: usage: _jb_pytest_runner.py [options] [file_or_dir] [file_or_dir] [...]
_jb_pytest_runner.py: error: unrecognized arguments: --driver_path
inifile: /home/adrian/Projects/myframework/pytest.ini
rootdir: /home/adrian/Projects/myframework"

Using it like this makes it work as stated above
--driver_path=webdrivers/chromedriver

Using anything that doesn't match a folder works as well
--driver_path linux/chromedriver