Tests in `instrumented` directory are executed the same way as in `run` but they have additional byte-code instrumentation performed for profiling. You should put your tests in `instrumented` directory if you are interested in method call counts. Examples include tests for specialization (you want to count boxing and unboxing method calls) or high-level tests for optimizer where you are interested if methods are successfuly inlined (so they should not be called at runtime) or closures are eliminated (so no constructors of closures are called). Check `scala.tools.partest.instrumented.Instrumentation` to learn how to use the instrumentation infrastructure. The instrumentation itself is achieved by attaching a Java agent to the forked VM process that injects calls to profiler. Check `scala.tools.partest.instrumented.Instrumentation`.