cargo-nextest

name: cargo-nextest description: Use when running Rust tests slowly with cargo test, or when CI test time hurts. Drop-in faster runner with better output, retries, and JUnit XML. allowed-tools: Bash(cargo:), Bash(cargo-nextest:)

cargo-nextest

Faster, prettier cargo test replacement. ~60% faster on most workspaces.

When to use

• Default test run: cargo nextest run
• Filter: cargo nextest run <substring> · by crate: -p <crate>
• Retry flaky: cargo nextest run --retries 2
• CI JUnit output: cargo nextest run --profile ci with [profile.ci.junit] path = "junit.xml" in .config/nextest.toml
• List without running: cargo nextest list

Prerequisites

• cargo-nextest (cargo install cargo-nextest --locked)

Notes

• Does NOT run doctests — keep cargo test --doc in CI alongside nextest.
• Parallelism is per-test, not per-binary, which is the speedup source.
• Stable test IDs make flake tracking easy: <crate>::<test_path>.