Overview

Meta-arguments are special directives applicable to test resources (Scenario:, Feature:) that alter the default behavior of Testform’s planner and execution engine.

Directly mirroring Terraform meta-arguments, these directives manage execution ordering and lifecycle constraints across test suites.

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Active Meta-arguments

Testform currently supports two core meta-arguments:

1. depends_on

Declares explicit dependencies between test scenarios. Builds a topological Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) to guarantee execution order and skip downstream tests if prerequisites fail.

• Syntax: @depends_on("path/feature.feature.@tag")

2. lifecycle

Manages lifecycle protection and drift suppression rules:

• prevent_destroy: Blocks critical scenarios from being removed during testform destroy or reconciliation plans.
• ignore_changes: Suppresses drift detection on dynamic assertions or flaky steps.
• Syntax: @lifecycle(prevent_destroy=true) or @lifecycle(ignore_changes=["selector"])