[tony-davis]

Add Optional Enhanced Metadata Fields to Test Categories

This PR adds optional fields to the test_categories.yaml schema to enable richer test documentation and future AI-assisted test selection.

Key Points ✅

• All new fields are optional - Zero burden on teams that don't want them
• 100% backward compatible - Existing YAML files work unchanged
• Minimal code changes - Parser naturally ignores unknown fields (no code changes needed!)
• Incremental adoption - Teams add fields only when they see value
• Clear documentation - Enhanced README with examples and use cases

Changes

1. README.md: Document optional enhancement fields with examples and use cases

Examples

Minimal usage (works exactly as base PR):

test_categories:
  smoke:
    description: "Quick sanity tests"
    test_patterns: ["*smoke*"]
    labels: ["smoke"]

Enhanced usage (when team wants better documentation):

test_categories:
  smoke:
    description: "Quick sanity tests"
    notes: "Run for any API changes. Critical path tests."
    source_coverage: ["library/src/api.cpp"]
    api_coverage: ["initialize", "cleanup"]
    feature_tags: ["fast", "critical-path"]
    test_patterns: ["*smoke*"]
    labels: ["smoke"]

Why Include Optional Fields in the Standard?

1. Consistency - Teams wanting richer metadata have a standardized structure
2. Flexibility - No mandatory adoption, teams use what they need
3. Prevents divergence - Projects like hipBLASlt that need extra metadata can adopt the standard as-is rather than creating project-specific extensions
4. Future-proof - Enables innovation (AI-assisted test selection, better documentation) without breaking changes

Testing

• ✅ Parser gracefully ignores optional fields (no code changes needed)
• ✅ CTest execution behavior unchanged
• ✅ Backward compatible with existing deployments

Context

This enables projects like hipBLASlt (with ~200+ test configurations) to adopt the standardized approach with rich test metadata, rather than implementing project-specific extensions that would defeat the standardization effort.

This PR is a rebase of #3897 to target the new MIOpen branch (users/dravindr/ctest_miopen from PR #3513) instead of the abandoned PR #2411.

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR extends the shared CTest YAML schema documentation with optional metadata fields to support richer test categorization and future AI-assisted test selection without changing existing parsing behavior.

Changes:

• Document an “enhanced” YAML structure for test_categories.yaml, introducing optional fields such as notes, source_coverage, api_coverage, feature_tags, dependencies, and a top-level llm_context.
• Add a summary table and key points clarifying that these enhancement fields are optional, informational, and backward compatible with the existing parser and CTest integration.

---

💡 Add Copilot custom instructions for smarter, more guided reviews. Learn how to get started.

[tony-davis]

Fixed - clarified that optional fields are for documentation/downstream tooling only, not enforced by the parser. Thanks for catching this!