Test order dependency

Playbook ID: order-dependency Category: test Severity: medium Tags: test, order, state, isolation

What this failure means

A test failed because it depends on side effects or state created by a different test that ran earlier. When test order changes, the assumed preconditions are absent.

Common log signals

depends on previous test
test order
test assumes
leaked state
global state
left over from previous

Diagnosis

A test failed because it depends on side effects or state created by a different test that ran earlier. When test order changes, the assumed preconditions are absent.

Fix steps

1. Add proper setup and teardown to the failing test so it creates its own required state independently.

2. Remove shared mutable fixtures between tests; every test should own and clean up its own data.

3. Run tests in random order to surface all hidden ordering assumptions:

   go test -shuffle=on ./...                  # Go 1.20+
   pytest --randomly-seed=<N>                 # Python, requires pytest-randomly
   jest --randomize                           # Jest 29+
   

   Record and re-use the seed from a failing run to reproduce the exact order:

   go test -shuffle=on -v ./... 2>&1 | grep -E "^-test.shuffle"
   pytest --randomly-seed=<seed from the failing run>
   

4. Add cleanup in defer (Go), afterEach/afterAll (Jest), or teardown (Python) to guarantee state is reset regardless of test outcome.

Validation

• Run the full suite with shuffle enabled several times and confirm zero failures across different orderings.
• Re-run the originally failing test in isolation and confirm it passes.

Likely files to inspect

• .github/workflows/*.yml
• .github/workflows/*.yaml
• testdata/
• internal/

Run Faultline

faultline analyze build.log
faultline explain order-dependency
faultline workflow build.log --json --mode agent

Search phrases this page answers

• Test order dependency
• Test: test order dependency
• depends on previous test
• faultline explain order-dependency

---

Generated from playbooks/bundled/log/test/order-dependency.yaml. Do not edit directly — run make docs-generate.