May be we could use method annotation to carry this kind of behavior. Lukas started to do something in that direction.
Well, really, what I'm looking for is something that instead of saying "all tests are green, everything is fine" says "all the tests we ran were green, but there were various that were *not* run so YMMV". I think what I'm really looking for is something that instead of saying "x tests, y passed" either says "x tests, y passed, z skipped" or simply doesn't include the "skipped" ones in the number of tests being run. In either case, looking at something that says "19 tests, 0 passed, 19 skipped" or simply "0 tests, 0 passed" is vastly more explicit than "19 tests, 19 passed" where in reality 0 were run.
Like, what if a test which doesn't have any assertion is simply not counted? Doesn't make sense to begin with, and then all the preconditions need to do is to bail out and the test doesn't count...
In any case, my complaint here is more about the *perception* of "these tests are all green, everything must be fine" when in fact, none of them have tested anything.
For that I would extend SUnit because this idea of skipped tests is nice to have.