Marking a package with pytestmark in __init__.py

[seifertm]

I was looking for ways to attach a marker to all tests inside a package and I stumbled upon two issues that use pytestmark inside __init__.py to mark all test items in a package: #9245 #5830

However, the docs only mention markers for classes and modules.

Is this approach for marking tests in a package "officially" supported? In other words, is it reasonable for a plugin (in this case pytest-asyncio) to rely on package markers?

[nchaly]

Even more frustrating is that package markers are clearly visible when stopping in "get_closest_marker" while debugging.

After researching the topic more, I understood that it works during debugging session because of automatic "obj" property execution for packages by watching variables. Well, good news. This seems to be a design feature to prevent heavy packages eager initialization.

So came up with the following workaround (my packages are not heavy):

def pytest_collection_modifyitems(config, items: list[pytest.Item]):
  MARK_NAME = 'xxx'
  for item in items:
    # inline modified `get_closest_marker`
    for node in reversed(item.listchain()):
      if hasattr(node, "obj"):
        unused_obj = node.obj  # force package to load 
      for mark in node.own_markers:
         if getattr(mark, "name", None) == MARK_NAME:
           ...  # perform changes we need.
           break
     ...

[RonnyPfannschmidt]

package markers are currently not a official feature, if they work by accident, we should be more explicit about them and either elevate them to official, or disallow them

allowing them plainly seems like a potential way to break module level markers for just init.py