4.0.0

Full Changelog: 3.1.0...4.0.0

Pabot 4.0.0

Major Changes

• Improved Robot Framework 7.1 Compatibility

  • Enhanced SharedLibrary compatibility
  • Support for --legacyoutput option for compatibility with older tools

• PabotLib Now Enabled by Default: PabotLib functionality is now automatically enabled and doesn't require explicit activation

  • Old --pabotlib argument is kept for backwards compatibility but does nothing
  • New --no-pabotlib argument added to disable PabotLib when needed

• Flexible Argument Positioning: Pabot options no longer need to be placed before Robot Framework options

• Enhanced Error Handling and Test Execution:

  • Ordering file errors are now properly categorized as test data problems rather than Pabot failures
  • Improved preservation of test execution order when sharding
  • Fixed incorrect process number allocation in dryrun mode
  • Better support for non-English robot case files with --language option (e.g., pabot --language zh-CN localized.robot)

• Installation and Packaging:

  • Added wheel packages for easier installation

Breaking Changes

• PabotLib being enabled by default might affect existing workflows that assumed it was disabled
• Modified test sharding behavior for better order preservation

Contributors

• Mikko Korpela
• David Hotham (Wheel publishing)
• WendyInXian (Dryrun process allocation fix)
• Patrik William (Shards ordering)
• Yinling He (Non-English file support)

Known Issues

• Some timing-related issues have been reported (#593, #596) but appear to be related to Robot Framework core

Compatibility

• Tested against Robot Framework versions 4.1.3, 5.0.1, 6.0.2, 6.1.1, 7.0.1 and 7.1.1.
• Tested against Python versions 3.8, 3.10 and 3.12