Can you specify Resource Files in the Command Line call for Robot Framework

Question

Can you specify resource files in the command line for Robot Framework similar to variable files? http://robotframework.googlecode.com/svn/tags/robotframework-2.5.5/doc/userguide/RobotFrameworkUserGuide.html#variable-files

A lot of our tests use the same resource file and we're trying to see if we can speed up execution by only including the resource file once.

Answer 1

No, you cannot force resource files to be loaded from the command line. Unless your resource files are absolutely huge (as in, 100's or 1000's of megabytes) or are used in thousands of test suites, the time to parse them is typically measured in milliseconds.

Answer 2

I'm not really sure whether you would be fine with a workaround, but there is Import Resource keyword

http://robotframework.org/robotframework/latest/libraries/BuiltIn.html#Import%20Resource

So I'd say, that you can use that at least to test.

But if your expectation is that if there is resource in multiple robot files and so it is loaded multiple times I'd just guess this is not correct assumption, so you won't save a second using this.

But I'm just a beginner with Robot Framework, so there is a chance I'm wrong...