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Smarter Unit Test Execution #5965
Description
Right now all unit tests run during a plan unless the --skip-tests flag is used.
We already have the plan which shows us which models are affected by the changes. It makes sense to trim the unit tests that run during a plan to only the models that are affected by applying the plan.
I am not sure what behavior should happen for the --skip-backfill / --dry-run flags, but my initial thought is to skip all tests for this flag as well since it's considered a no-op operation.
To have backwards compatibility, we can add in an --all-tests flag to the plan command. I can see this being useful for CI dry-runs as well as edge cases that may show up.
Activity
cmgoffena13 commentedon Aug 21, 2026
After thinking about it: the
--skip-backfill/--dry-runflags already run all tests, so to make behavior more predictable, it makes more sense to just limit tests to model changes in a dry-run too. Keeping the--all-testsflag for backwards compatibility though.cmgoffena13 commentedon Aug 29, 2026
After discussion, have decided to flip the logic and have the smarter unit test execution be opt in with a flag called
--test-changed-only