title: How to speed up pytest
body: <p>Is there some way to speed up the repeated execution of <code>pytest</code>? It seems to spend a lot of time collecting tests, even if I specify which files to execute on the command line. I know it isn't a disk speed issue either since running pyflakes across all the .py files is very fast.</p>
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  <p>The various answers represent different ways pytest can be slow. They helped sometimes, did not in others. I'm adding one more answer that explains a common speed problem. But it's not possible to select &quot;The&quot; answer here.</p>