Detailed xfail output sometimes distracts from unexpected failures

[EliahKagan]

This issue is to track the problem noticed in #1853 and #1862 (see comments in both) where the specific details of new test failures are made less obvious in reading pytest output, in CI checks, due to the otherwise useful pytest 8 feature to show more such details.

From #1853 (comment):

pytest output now contains details of tests with xfail (expected failure) status, which are unrelated, and that may have distracted from the related test's failure. This changed in major version 8 of pytest (which GitPython is using automatically except on Python 3.7 which doesn't support it). Overall, for most projects, it seems to me that this is an improvement, since it's useful to be able to see the specific details of xfailing tests without extra effort (and check if they really match up with the messages written in the xfail decorators). However, it may be that for GitPython's tests it makes common tasks more cumbersome. If so, then the pytest configuration can be changed (this does not require downgrading pytest).

I'm unsure what the best solution is, but if necessary the -ra in

GitPython/pyproject.toml

Line 6 in 5364053

addopts = "--cov=git --cov-report=term --disable-warnings -ra"

can be changed to something that does not imply x (xfail). The "full list of available characters" in the Producing a detailed summary report section of the documentation documents how to specify which test statuses to emit detailed output for.

I'm unsure of what should be done and I don't know of an easy way to eliminate the distracting effects while still having the benefit of seeing specific output of xfailing tests.