Summary
Pester v6's "soft assertion" behaviour (collect all failures instead of stopping at the first one) is under-documented and hard to discover. The word "soft assertion" does not appear anywhere on https://pester.dev today — the feature is only described at the bottom of the Should page under the heading "Collect all Should failures".
This issue tracks two related documentation improvements.
1. Document -ErrorAction on the generated Should-* Command Reference pages
On every generated Should-* page (e.g. Should-Be), -ErrorAction currently only shows up in the generic boilerplate line:
This cmdlet supports the common parameters: -Debug, -ErrorAction, …
There is no hint that, for assertions, -ErrorAction is the knob that controls soft-assertion behaviour:
-ErrorAction Continue — record the failure but keep going (soft assertion)-ErrorAction Stop — fail the test immediately (e.g. to guard a precondition before continuing)
We should surface this per-assertion meaning on the generated pages (e.g. via the comment-based help description/notes for the Should-* commands).
⚠️ Note: the Command Reference pages are auto-generated from comment-based help in the pester/pester source, so the actual text change for this part needs to land there. Filing here to track the overall documentation gap.
2. Add a dedicated "Soft assertions" entry describing how to enable them for every assertion
Add a discoverable entry (own section/page in the Assertions section) that:
-
Uses the term "soft assertions" explicitly so it's searchable.
-
Explains how to turn them on globally for every assertion, rather than per-assertion:
$config = New-PesterConfiguration
$config.Should.ErrorAction = 'Continue'
# or via $PesterPreference.Should.ErrorAction = 'Continue'
-
Notes that the global setting is honoured by both the classic Should -Be syntax and the new Should-* assertions.
-
Shows how to override it on a single assertion with -ErrorAction Stop (precondition) / -ErrorAction Continue.
-
Cross-links from / consolidates the existing "Collect all Should failures" section.
Suggested section
Assertions
References
Summary
Pester v6's "soft assertion" behaviour (collect all failures instead of stopping at the first one) is under-documented and hard to discover. The word "soft assertion" does not appear anywhere on https://pester.dev today — the feature is only described at the bottom of the Should page under the heading "Collect all Should failures".
This issue tracks two related documentation improvements.
1. Document
-ErrorActionon the generatedShould-*Command Reference pagesOn every generated
Should-*page (e.g.Should-Be),-ErrorActioncurrently only shows up in the generic boilerplate line:There is no hint that, for assertions,
-ErrorActionis the knob that controls soft-assertion behaviour:-ErrorAction Continue— record the failure but keep going (soft assertion)-ErrorAction Stop— fail the test immediately (e.g. to guard a precondition before continuing)We should surface this per-assertion meaning on the generated pages (e.g. via the comment-based help description/notes for the
Should-*commands).2. Add a dedicated "Soft assertions" entry describing how to enable them for every assertion
Add a discoverable entry (own section/page in the Assertions section) that:
Uses the term "soft assertions" explicitly so it's searchable.
Explains how to turn them on globally for every assertion, rather than per-assertion:
Notes that the global setting is honoured by both the classic
Should -Besyntax and the newShould-*assertions.Shows how to override it on a single assertion with
-ErrorAction Stop(precondition) /-ErrorAction Continue.Cross-links from / consolidates the existing "Collect all Should failures" section.
Suggested section
Assertions
References