[issue2578] Figure out what to do with unittest's redundant APIs

[Steve Purcell]

Steve Purcell <purcell at users.sourceforge.net> added the comment:

Hey, I'm open to anything.  If I started writing unittest from scratch 
knowing what I know now, I'd probably have kept the API a little 
slimmer.  Oh, and I'd have named everthing according to Python 
conventions; my deepest and belated apologies for that.

I think the design has held up pretty well, even if it's arguably not 
the most pythonic.  Its familiarity to users of other xUnit frameworks 
really does help new Pythoneers start writing tests immediately.  And as 
for the TestLoader stuff, it looks (and perhaps is) a bit overblown, but 
I can't count the number of times people have asked me how to do obscure 
or unusual things with the module and I've been able to respond with 
something like, "just write a custom TestLoader/TestRunner".

I don't intend to take unittest in any particular direction; truth be 
told, I'm now only an occasional visitor to the land of Python, and I 
don't think I've had commit rights since the move to subversion.  My 
continued involvement with the unittest tickets is mainly to help 
provide input along the lines of "we discussed this years ago, and 
decided against it / thought it would be great".  Far be it from me to 
stand in the way of progress -- I'd be happy to see unittest re-worked 
in any way that makes sense.

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<http://bugs.python.org/issue2578>
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