BehaveX

Production-grade test orchestration for Python BDD.

BehaveX extends Behave with parallel execution, enterprise-grade reporting, and the operational controls needed to run test suites at scale. Downloaded 121,000+ times per month.

✨ Latest Features

🪝 before_all_workers / after_all_workers hooks (v4.6.4) — New lifecycle hooks that run once in the coordinator process, before any worker starts and after all finish. Values set on context are injected into every worker automatically.

📊 context.behavex execution metadata (v4.6.4) — BehaveX now injects a context.behavex namespace into every worker: parallel_scheme, parallel_processes, is_worker, worker_id.

🚫 --no-report flag (v4.6.4) — Disables all file output. No HTML/JSON/XML reports or output folder are created. Evidence is redirected to the system temp directory. Designed for read-only CI environments.

🔍 Stack Trace on Error (v4.6.2) — Click on any failed step in the HTML report to expand the full stack trace inline.

📐 Gherkin Rule Section Support (v4.6.2) — Full support for Rule: blocks in feature files.

🏷️ Tag Expressions v2 (v4.6.0) — Native Cucumber-style tag expressions with boolean logic, parentheses, and wildcards.

🚀 Enhanced Behave Integration (v4.5.0) — Support for Behave >= 1.3.0. Major performance overhaul.

📊 Interactive Execution Timeline (v4.5.0) — Visual timeline showing scenario execution across parallel workers.

🎯 Test Execution Ordering (v4.4.1) — Control scenario/feature order in parallel runs with @ORDER_001 tags.

Installation

pip install behavex

Quick Start

# Run all scenarios
behavex

# Run scenarios tagged @smoke with 4 parallel processes
behavex -t=@smoke --parallel-processes=4 --parallel-scheme=scenario

# Cucumber-style tag filtering (Behave 1.3.0+)
behavex -t="(@smoke or @regression) and not @slow" --parallel-processes=4

# Dry run — list all scenarios in HTML report without executing
behavex -t=@smoke --dry-run

BehaveX vs Behave

BehaveX is a zero-friction upgrade — your existing feature files and step definitions work unchanged.

Capability	Behave	BehaveX
Parallel execution	❌	✅ By feature or scenario, N processes
HTML report	❌	✅ With screenshots, logs, evidence
Allure integration	❌	✅ Full support with thread labels
Auto-retry on failure	❌	✅ @AUTORETRY / @AUTORETRY_3
Test muting	❌	✅ @MUTE — run but exclude from CI results
Execution ordering	❌	✅ @ORDER_001 tags for dependency-aware runs
Execution timeline	❌	✅ Visual timeline across parallel workers
Pass rate & automation metrics	❌	✅ Per-run dashboard in HTML report
Dry run with HTML report	Basic	✅ Shareable spec report
Per-scenario log files	❌	✅ Linked directly in HTML report
Screenshot evidence	❌	✅ Via behavex-images

Who Uses BehaveX

• Apache NiFi MiNiFi C++ — The Apache Foundation uses BehaveX for their C++ dataflow agent.
• LambdaTest — Featured in LambdaTest's official Python BDD documentation.
• SovereignCloudStack — Used for real-life IaaS/KaaS health monitoring in the Gaia-X ecosystem.
• Qase — Official integration with the Qase enterprise test management platform.

Using BehaveX? Open a PR to be listed here.

Documentation

Full documentation at behavex.readthedocs.io

• Getting Started
• Migrating from Behave
• Tag Expressions
• Parallel Execution
• Reporting
• Test Management
• CLI Reference
• Utilities

Get Involved

BehaveX grows through community use and contribution. If it's useful to your team:

• ⭐ Star the repo — helps other teams discover the project
• 🐛 Report issues — your use case helps improve BehaveX for everyone
• 🔧 Contribute — PRs are welcome, from docs to features
• 📢 Spread the word — mention BehaveX when you talk about Python testing

Used by the Apache Foundation, LambdaTest, SovereignCloudStack, and teams worldwide.