Selective Test Execution in Dataform CLI

[uchiuzo-sansan]

First and foremost, thank you to all the developers who contribute to making Dataform an excellent tool. This feature request comes from a genuine passion to make Dataform even better for our growing community of users.

Problem Statement

Currently, when running tests using the Dataform CLI, all tests in the repository are executed regardless of the specific needs of the developer. This creates several issues:

• Performance Impact: In repositories with many tests, unnecessary test execution leads to significant overhead
• Development Productivity: Developers lose valuable time waiting for irrelevant tests to complete during local development and debugging

Proposed Solution

Implement the ability to specify specific actions when running tests, similar to how actions can be specified during execution. This would allow developers to run only the tests they need.

Suggested Implementation

Add support for action filtering in test commands, allowing syntax like:

# Run tests for specific actions
dataform test --actions=action1,action2

# Run tests matching a pattern
dataform test --actions="users_*"

# Run tests for a specific tag
dataform test --tags=core

Benefits

1. Faster Development Cycles: Developers can quickly validate changes without waiting for unrelated tests
2. Improved Developer Experience: More targeted testing aligns with typical development workflows
3. Consistency: Mirrors the existing pattern used in dataform run command

Use Cases

• Feature Development: Test only the models/assertions related to current work
• Debugging: Quickly iterate on failing tests without running the entire suite
• Continuous Integration: Allow CI pipelines to run targeted test subsets for different scenarios
• Large Repositories: Make testing manageable in repositories with hundreds of tests

Current Workaround

Currently, developers must either:

• Run all tests (inefficient)
• Temporarily modify or comment out test files (error-prone)
• Use external tooling to filter tests (adds complexity)

Compatibility

This enhancement should maintain backward compatibility - running dataform test without arguments should continue to execute all tests as it currently does.

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This feature would significantly improve the developer experience for teams working with large Dataform projects and align the testing workflow with the existing execution patterns already familiar to users.