JUnit XML

JUnit XML is the lingua franca of CI test dashboards. Tales produces a Surefire-compatible XML file with one <testsuite> per .tales file and one <testcase> per scenario.

Usage

tales test ./e2e/pass --report-junit ./reports/junit.xml

The parent directory is created if missing. The output is fully self-contained, no external schema dependencies.

Schema

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<testsuites>
  <testsuite name="e2e/pass/blog.tales"
             tests="3" failures="0" skipped="0" time="1.232"
             timestamp="2026-05-27T18:30:00Z">
    <testcase name="Create blog post" classname="e2e/pass/blog.tales" time="0.842">
      <!-- empty when passed -->
    </testcase>
    <testcase name="Failing scenario" classname="e2e/pass/blog.tales" time="0.123">
      <failure message="status mismatch: want 201, got 500" type="assertion">
        expected status 201 at scenario.create_user.expect.status
        actual: 500 Internal Server Error
      </failure>
    </testcase>
    <testcase name="Skipped scenario" classname="e2e/pass/blog.tales" time="0">
      <skipped message="iOS tests require macOS and IOS_APP_PATH"/>
    </testcase>
  </testsuite>
</testsuites>

Mapping to Tales concepts

Tales concept	XML element
`.tales` file	`<testsuite name="<file path>">`
Scenario	`<testcase name="<scenario name>" classname="<file path>">`
Failed scenario	`<failure message="..." type="assertion">...</failure>`
Skipped scenario	`<skipped message="<skip reason>"/>`
Step duration	aggregated into `time="<seconds>"` on the testcase
Teardown step	rolled into the scenario’s duration (no separate testcase)

Skip support

The <testsuite> element gains a skipped="N" attribute, and each skipped scenario emits a <skipped message="…"/> child on its <testcase>. This matches Surefire / JUnit5 conventions and shows up correctly in:

Jenkins JUnit plugin
GitLab CI test reports
CircleCI test summary
Bitbucket Pipelines test reports
Azure DevOps test runs

Action-level data is not flattened

Mobile action records (tap, swipe, etc.) are intentionally not decomposed into <testcase> elements. They live in the JSONL stream and the visual HTML report instead, JUnit consumers don’t typically know what to do with sub-step data.

CI integration

The most common pattern is to combine console (for live log scrolling) with JUnit (for the dashboard):

tales test ./e2e/pass \
  --seed 1234 \
  --report-junit ./reports/junit.xml

Then point your CI configuration at ./reports/junit.xml. Examples in CI integration.