Reporting test cases marked with "pending" Kaocha tag as "skipped" in JUnit XML output

[samcarver4]

Background

Kaocha allows tests to be marked with a pending tag. This allows tests to be filtered when running tests using Kaocha but still have the data reported in the output. This is useful for building a suite of tests for a pending, yet-to-be-implemented feature. The following is an example of a simple test marked with this tag:

(ns sample.project.sample-test
  (:require [clojure.test :refer [deftest is]]))

(deftest ^:kaocha/pending pending-test  
  (is (= 1 1)  
      "This should be marked as 'skipped' by JUnit!"))

I am working in a Polylith codebase using polylith-kaocha as the test runner Running tests yield the following output:

1 test, 0 assertions, 1 pending, 0 failures.

PENDING sample.project.pending-test (:)

We've configured our polylith-kaocha tests to generate JUnit XML test results using this plugin in our Kaocha config. This is being generated however we're hitting a snag because the pending tests aren't actually running (as expected), but in the JUnit XML test results they look like they are running and passing:

1. Run the sample-test suite
   clj -M:poly test
2. Open the generated JUnit XML test report:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>  
<testsuites>  
  <testsuite errors="0" package="" tests="1" name="sample-test" time="0.545124"    hostname="localhost" id="0" timestamp="2025-11-11T10:51:50" failures="0">  
    <properties/>  
    <testcase name="sample.project.sample-test/pending-test"         classname="sample.project.sample-test" time="0.000000" line="4" column="1" file="/sample/project/sample_test.clj">  
    </testcase>  
  <system-out/>  
  <system-err/>  
</testsuites>

3. Note the pending-test result in the JUnit XML test report is missing the <skipped /> element that would usually be nested within <testcase> element to indicate that the test has been skipped.

Desired behaviour

1. Run the sample-test suite
   clj -M:poly test
2. Open the generated JUnit XML test report:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>  
<testsuites>  
  <testsuite errors="0" package="" tests="1" name="sample-test" time="0.545124"    hostname="localhost" id="0" timestamp="2025-11-11T10:51:50" failures="0">  
    <properties/>  
    <testcase name="sample.project.sample-test/pending-test"         classname="sample.project.sample-test" time="0.000000" line="4" column="1" file="/sample/project/sample_test.clj">  
      <skipped/>
    </testcase>  
  <system-out/>  
  <system-err/>  
</testsuites>

3. Observe the test result for sample-test is correctly tagged as skipped

Please let me know if I can provide any more detail, as this is my first time raising an issue on GitHub. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!

[plexus]

Thanks for the report, I suspect it's just missing a filter and these can be straightforwardly elided. A pull request with a fix would be much appreciated.

Looking at the code it's probably easiest to already filter these out in the leaf-tests function: https://github.com/lambdaisland/kaocha-junit-xml/blob/main/src/kaocha/plugin/junit_xml.clj#L32-L35

If this is your first time hacking on kaocha, start here for an overview of the data model: https://cljdoc.org/d/lambdaisland/kaocha/1.91.1392/doc/9-extending

[samcarver4]

Thanks for the quick reply @plexus , I'll check it out and have a look!

[samcarver4]

Hi @plexus , I have a PR candidate ready on a new branch, however it looks like I don't have permission to push this - please let me know if this is something you can help with! Thanks again in advance.

[samcarver4]

Hi @plexus , I have a PR candidate ready on a new branch, however it looks like I don't have permission to push this - please let me know if this is something you can help with! Thanks again in advance.

Hi @plexus , just checking if there's any update on this access issue? 👆
I have a fix ready to raise as a Pull Request, but am getting blocked by GitHub when trying to do so with an error:

ERROR: Permission to lambdaisland/kaocha-junit-xml.git denied to samcarver4.
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.

[plexus]

You normally don't push to the upstream repo, you push to your own fork of the repo, you can then make a PR from there.

[samcarver4]

Thanks for the update @plexus - I have a PR available for review here. Thanks in advance!