[py-dev] Re: py.test and unittest; TestGears and TestOOB

[Kevin Dangoor]

On 9/19/05, Ian Bicking <ianb at colorstudy.com> wrote:
> Hi - I should preface this saying that I'm proposing work without
> offering help, so read as you will ;)

Nothing wrong with suggestions, if you ask me...

> I thought I'd also point out that there's a couple new test systems that
> stick to unittest, and offer some portion of py.test's features;
> TestGears: http://www.turbogears.org/testgears/ and TestOOB:
> http://testoob.sourceforge.net/
> 
> I'm guessing it wouldn't be that hard to convince Kevin (TestGears
> maintainer, who I've copied) to bring that work back to py.test; I don't
> really know what TestOOB people are feeling, but I've copied Ori as well.

TestGears was created for TurboGears and it had these basic requirements:

1) it needed to be installable as an egg
2) it should work with setuptools' unittest support
3) it should eliminate the need to write TestSuites by hand

I actually use py.test for Zesty News, but eggs are a crucial part of
the TurboGears experience. I remember sending a message to py-dev
about running py.test from an egg, but unraveling all of the magic
that happens inside of pylib was just not going to fit in my
timeframe. For me, it would have taken considerably longer to get
py.test running from an egg than it would to meet my three
requirements above. And once I met those three, it didn't take me long
at all to tack on the ability to run py.test-like test functions.

> Personally, I'm just hoping not to have to get into
> which-testing-framework-should-I-use conversations in the future ;)

The groovy thing about TestGears, IMHO, is that it's not a test
framework at all. It's nothing more than a test collector. For people
using unittest for whatever reason, it's a handy way to have test
suites easily populated for you. It sounds like Robert Brewer may have
pulled TestGears' collector into CherryPy, but I haven't looked to see
for sure. That's the kind of use I really see for TestGears.

The #1 thing I *miss* from py.test is the nice output you get from
standard asserts. I believe TestOOB does that as well.

In a nutshell: TestGears is not core to me. If someone can hand me a
cooler test tool that meets my requirements above, I'd happily
deprecate TestGears.

Kevin

-- 
Kevin Dangoor
Author of the Zesty News RSS newsreader

email: kid at blazingthings.com
company: http://www.BlazingThings.com
blog: http://www.BlueSkyOnMars.com