[issue15007] Unittest CLI does not support test packages very well

[R. David Murray]

New submission from R. David Murray <rdmurray at bitdance.com>:

Suppose you have a test package:

  test_pkg
     __init__.py
     test_mytest.py

If __init__.py is empty and you run

   python -m unittest test_pk

no tests are found.

You can get this to work by adding the following boiler plate to __init__.py:

  def load_tests(loader, standard_tests, pattern):
    this_dir = os.path.dirname(__file__)
    if pattern is None:
        pattern = "test*"
    package_tests = loader.discover(start_dir=this_dir,
                                    pattern=pattern,
                                    top_level_dir=this_dir)
    standard_tests.addTests(package_tests)
    return standard_tests

Note that top_level_dir is required to handle specifying more than one test package at a time on the unittest command line.  Otherwise the second package gets a loader that already has _top_level_dir set, and so it fails to default to start_dir.  I suspect this is also a bug.

This works; it uses discovery to find the tests and returns them using the load test protocol.  Other methods could be used to construct the test to add as well.  But all have the serious disadvantage that the package name does not appear in the output.  Running the above test_pkg command line give results like this with -v:

  test_something (test_mytest.Test) ... ok

test_pkg is not mentioned.  This is merely annoying when running a single test package, but if you
do something like:

  python -m unittest -v test_pkg test_pkg2

You can't tell in the verbose output or the test failure output which
test package the tests are from.

In summary, unittest needs better support for test packages.

----------
messages: 162374
nosy: michael.foord, r.david.murray
priority: normal
severity: normal
stage: needs patch
status: open
title: Unittest CLI does not support test packages very well
type: enhancement
versions: Python 3.3

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue15007>
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