Exclusion by annotation not working for sbt test/testOnly - sbt

Question

Consider the following org.scalatest.TagAnnotation subclass:
public class TestSizeTags {
/** Tests with crazy long runtimes **/
#org.scalatest.TagAnnotation
#Inherited
#Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
#Target({ElementType.METHOD, ElementType.TYPE})
public static #interface HugeTestClass {}
}
Let us annotate/tag a class with it:
#HugeTestClass
class ItemsJobTest extends FunSuite with BeforeAndAfterEach with DataFrameSuiteBase {
Now we want a quick "smoke test suite" on the codebase; therefore, let us (attempt) to exclude the testcases annotated by HugeTestClass :
Command line:
sbt test * -- -l HugeTestClass
OR maybe:
sbt 'testOnly * -- -l HugeTestClass'
Let us also attempt it within sbt itself:
sbt> testOnly * -- -l HugeTestClass
In all cases above we (unfortunately) still see:
[info] ItemsJobTest:
^C[info] - Run Items Pipeline *** FAILED *** (2 seconds, 796 milliseconds)
So the test actually did run.. contrary to the intention.
So what is the correct syntax / approach to apply a Tag Filter(/Exclusion) via sbt to scalatest classes?

Answer 1

You missed to put the testOnly part in double quote and also give full package to the Tag Annotation to ignore,
sbt "test-only * -- -l full.package.to.HugeTestClass"
example,
Tag annotation
package tags;
import java.lang.annotation.ElementType;
import java.lang.annotation.Retention;
import java.lang.annotation.RetentionPolicy;
import java.lang.annotation.Target;
#org.scalatest.TagAnnotation
#Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
#Target({ElementType.METHOD, ElementType.TYPE})
public #interface ExcludeMePleaseTag {}
Test to exclude
#tags.ExcludeMePleaseTag
class ExcludeMeSpecs extends FlatSpec with Matchers {
"I" should " not run" in {
888 shouldBe 1
}
}
to exclude the tests
sbt "test-only * -- -l tags.ExcludeMePleaseTag"
This github issue was helpful - https://github.com/harrah/xsbt/issues/357#issuecomment-44867814
But it does not work with static Tag annotation,
public class WrapperClass {
#org.scalatest.TagAnnotation
#Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
#Target({ElementType.METHOD, ElementType.TYPE})
public static #interface ExcludeMePleaseTag {
}
}
sbt "test-only * -- -l tags.WrapperClass.ExcludeMePleaseTag"