Bug Fix 11282: config.getini returns an empty list for an option of type string absent in INI file

changelog/11282.bugfix.rst

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Return "None" as the default value if "None" or no default value if provided by the developer.In this approach, existing calls to the getini function would need to check for "None" values.

src/_pytest/config/__init__.py

@@ -1525,6 +1525,8 @@ class Config:
                     return default
                 if type is None:
                     return ""
+                if type == "string":
+                    return None
                 return []
         else:
             value = override_value

testing/test_conftest.py

@@ -221,6 +221,31 @@ def test_setinitial_conftest_subdirs(pytester: Pytester, name: str) -> None:
         assert len(set(pm.get_plugins()) - {pm}) == 0
 
 
+def test_my_option(pytester: Pytester):
+    testdir = pytester.mkdir("test_my_option")
+    testdir.joinpath("conftest.py").write_text(
+        textwrap.dedent(
+            """\
+            def pytest_addoption(parser):
+                parser.addini(
+                    "my_option",
+                    type="string",
+                    default=None,
+                    help="My option",
+                )
+            @pytest.fixture(scope='session')
+            def my_option(request):
+                return request.config.getini("my_option")
+            """
+        ),
+        encoding="utf-8",
+    )
+    result = pytester.runpytest(str(testdir))
+    assert result.ret == 0
+    captured_stdout = result.stdout.str()
+    assert "1 passed" in captured_stdout
+
+
 def test_conftest_confcutdir(pytester: Pytester) -> None:
     pytester.makeconftest("assert 0")
     x = pytester.mkdir("x")