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doc/en/how-to/skipping.rst

@@ -197,6 +197,14 @@ the test. You can also skip based on the version number of a library:
 The version will be read from the specified
 module's ``__version__`` attribute.
 
+Sometimes importing a module can fail due to an exception, if you want to
+only skip if the module does not exist pass ModuleNotFoundError as the
+``exc`` kwarg:
+
+.. code-block:: python
+
+    docutils = pytest.importorskip("docutils", exc=ModuleNotFoundError)
+
 Summary
 ~~~~~~~
 

src/_pytest/outcomes.py

@@ -249,7 +249,11 @@ def xfail(reason: str = "") -> NoReturn:
 
 
 def importorskip(
-    modname: str, minversion: Optional[str] = None, reason: Optional[str] = None
+    modname: str,
+    minversion: Optional[str] = None,
+    reason: Optional[str] = None,
+    *,
+    exc: Type[ImportError] = ImportError,
 ) -> Any:
     """Import and return the requested module ``modname``, or skip the
     current test if the module cannot be imported.
@@ -262,6 +266,9 @@ def importorskip(
     :param reason:
         If given, this reason is shown as the message when the module cannot
         be imported.
+    :param exc:
+        Either ImportError or ModuleNotFoundError, the exception to catch
+        when importing.
 
     :returns:
         The imported module. This should be assigned to its canonical name.
@@ -282,9 +289,9 @@ def importorskip(
         warnings.simplefilter("ignore")
         try:
             __import__(modname)
-        except ImportError as exc:
+        except exc as e:
             if reason is None:
-                reason = f"could not import {modname!r}: {exc}"
+                reason = f"could not import {modname!r}: {e}"
             raise Skipped(reason, allow_module_level=True) from None
     mod = sys.modules[modname]
     if minversion is None:

testing/test_skipping.py

@@ -1,7 +1,9 @@
 import sys
 import textwrap
+from pathlib import Path
 
 import pytest
+from _pytest.monkeypatch import MonkeyPatch
 from _pytest.pytester import Pytester
 from _pytest.runner import runtestprotocol
 from _pytest.skipping import evaluate_skip_marks
@@ -1428,6 +1430,28 @@ def test_importorskip() -> None:
         pytest.importorskip("doesnotexist")
 
 
+def test_importorskip_module_not_found() -> None:
+    with pytest.raises(
+        pytest.skip.Exception,
+        match="^could not import 'doesnotexist': No module named .*",
+    ):
+        pytest.importorskip("doesnotexist", exc=ModuleNotFoundError)
+
+
+def test_importorskip_module_not_found_raises_on_import_error(
+    monkeypatch: MonkeyPatch, tmp_path: Path
+) -> None:
+    on_path = tmp_path / "on_path"
+    on_path.mkdir()
+
+    (on_path / "doesnotexist.py").write_bytes(b"1 / 0")
+
+    monkeypatch.syspath_prepend(on_path)
+
+    with pytest.raises(ImportError):
+        pytest.importorskip("doesnotexist", exc=ModuleNotFoundError)
+
+
 def test_relpath_rootdir(pytester: Pytester) -> None:
     pytester.makepyfile(
         **{