Dry-run validation skipping plugin suite hooks during upgrade verification

Direct Answer

In most mainstream Cucumber implementations (cucumber‑jvm, cucumber‑js, cucumber‑ruby), --dry-run does execute BeforeAll/AfterAll hooks because they are bound to the test‑run lifecycle, not to individual scenario execution. The flag skips step bodies and per‑scenario Before/After hooks, but the runtime still starts, loads glue code, parses features, and fires the run‑level events that trigger BeforeAll/AfterAll.

Caveat: This behavior is not guaranteed by a cross‑implementation spec. It can differ by version, by language binding, and by whether a third‑party plugin subscribes to TestRunStarted/TestRunFinished (which fire) versus step‑level events (which do not carry executed results in dry‑run).

Likely Explanation vs. Confirmed Facts

• Likely: Your plugin’s beforeSuite/afterSuite (mapped to BeforeAll/AfterAll) will run during --dry-run because the test runner initializes the full lifecycle before discovering that no steps should be executed.
• Confirmed: Step definitions, Before/After (per‑scenario), and Around hooks are not executed. Only the run‑level hooks and plugin initialization code run.
• Uncertain: Exact behavior for your specific Cucumber version, language binding, and any third‑party formatter/plugin. The documentation does not uniformly specify this.

Recommended Validation Pattern (If Hooks Run)

1. Add a side‑effect marker inside the hook (log line, temporary file, environment variable).
2. Run cucumber --dry-run.
3. Verify the marker appears. If it does, the hook fired; you can trust the dry‑run for rollback verification.

Fallback Pattern (If Hooks Are Skipped or You Need Stronger Assurance)

Do not rely on dry‑run for rollback validation. Instead:

1. Extract rollback logic into a standalone, callable function/class (e.g., MigrationRollback.revert()).
2. Unit‑test that function directly — no Cucumber involved.
3. Run a minimal real suite tagged @smoke containing one trivial scenario (e.g., a single passing step). Execute cucumber --tags @smoke without --dry-run. The full hook lifecycle fires, the rollback path executes, and the suite completes in seconds.

One Diagnostic Detail Needed

Which Cucumber implementation and version are you using? (e.g., cucumber‑jvm 7.15.0, cucumber‑js 10.5.0, cucumber‑ruby 9.1.0, or a wrapper like Cypress‑Cucumber). The answer changes whether you can trust dry‑run for suite hooks or must adopt the fallback pattern.

Quick Verification Commands

# 1. Marker test (replace with your hook code)
echo 'BeforeAll hook fired' > /tmp/cuke_hook_marker
cucumber --dry-run
cat /tmp/cuke_hook_marker  # check content

# 2. Smoke‑tag run (no dry-run)
cucumber --tags @smoke