Add Skip Specific Pytest Test Cases as a Python TIL

python/skip-specific-pytest-test-cases.md

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+# Skip Specific Pytest Test Cases
+
+While using a failing test case to build a small new feature for
+[`py-vmt`](https://github.com/jbranchaud/py-vmt), I realized I needed to do some
+refactoring first. It wasn't significant enough to warrant stashing my current
+changes and switching to a different branch, so I kept all the changes around. I
+did find the initial failing test distracting from the refactoring I was trying
+to do. To temporarily shelve that failure, I can use a Pytest decorator to mark
+it as _skipped_.
+
+```python
+@pytest.mark.skip(reason="not yet implemented")
+def test_log_recent_activity():
+    runner = CliRunner()
+
+    # set up the data dir file with some existing session entries
+    initial_datetime = datetime.datetime(
+        2026, 3, 14, 15, 5, 11, 0, datetime.timezone.utc
+    )
+    with freeze_time(initial_datetime) as frozen_datetime:
+        # ...
+```
+
+The [`@pytest.mark.skip` decorator](https://docs.pytest.org/en/stable/how-to/skipping.html#skipping-test-functions)
+tells the Pytest runner to skip of that specific test case instead of executing
+it. In the test runner output, I'll see an `s` rather than a `.` or `F` and the
+summary will include it in a count of skipped tests:
+
+```
+=========================== 3 failed, 4 passed, 1 skipped in 0.09s ===========================
+```
+
+Another way to think about this is to mark this test case as _expected to fail_
+with `@pytest.mark.xfail`. That will display as an `x` and show up in the summary as:
+
+```
+=========================== 3 failed, 4 passed, 1 xfailed in 0.11s ===========================
+```