Removing tags from the "Test Tags" setting

Robot Framework
1

Hi
Is there any specific reason why the “Test Tags” setting in the Settings section does not allow to remove tags in the same way as the “[Tags]” setting available for test cases does? Relevant documentation part: Robot Framework User Guide

2

Hi Roman,

Not sure what situation where you would need this?

Can you give an example where you tests would get a tag that you remove that tag from all tests?

I’m not a developer on robot framework, so I can only guess that they never saw a need to this functionality at the Test Tags, as this option in [Tags], just over ides Test Tags, so what would be the higher up location where you might set a tag that would need Test Tags to over ride?

I guess if you do have a use case where you need the functionality create a feature request here

Dave.

3

I probably still on my way to properly understand the meaning of tags. Probably there is a better way to achieve what I want.
I set multiple tags in the top-level suite initialization file __init__.robot:
*** Settings ***
Test Tags tag1 tag2 tag3
And if that was possible to do Test Tags -tag1 in any suite then the suite could be completely excluded (now marking each test case from this suite with [Tags] -tag1 does the same). As a result all tests specific for a given tag can be run with robot -i tag1 ..
In addition to this practical benefit, it would be more consistent as Test Tags -tag1 introduces a new tag called “-tag1” which is a bit surprising.

4

Hi Roman,

Tags can be used for lots of things, though I’ve only used them for filtering tests and quickly identifying what’s impacted when tests fail

So because of this I only apply tags using [Tags] section on a test, I’ve never used any global tags myself.

Sorry I can’t help more than that, hopefully someone else can chime in,

Dave.

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6

The main reason was to avoid backwards compatibility problems in case someone already used

Test Tags     -something

where -something was a literal value. It probably also didn’t occur to us that someone would want to remove tags set in init files.

The current behavior with Test Tags and [Tags] is inconsistent and it probably would be a good idea to change it. We also didn’t hear anyone complaining that it’s not possible to anymore use

[Tags]    -something

so that -something is a literal value, so probably the change would also be safe with Test Tags.

Please submit an issue about this and I promise well consider it!

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