[Python-Dev] Location of tests for packages

[Raymond Hettinger]

On Jan 24, 2011, at 3:40 PM, Michael Foord wrote:
> It isn't just unittest, it seems that all *test packages* are in their respective package and not Lib/test except for the json module where Raymond already moved the tests:
> 
>    distutils/tests
>    email/test
>    ctypes/test
>    importlib/test
>    lib2to3/tests
>    sqlite3/test
>    tkinter/test
> 
> So I'm a little confused as to why the focus on the *unittest* test suite.


There's not a focus on unittest.  Importlib should also move under Lib/test
and when email is ready, it too should fully join the organization of
the overall project (Doc, Lib, Lib/test, Modules, Objects, Tools).

ISTM, ctypes and disutils could almost be viewed as separate projects.
We could ship Python without ctypes for example and we've got a policy
against implementing the rest of library using ctypes.  The same goes
for tkinter (it is not uncommon to have builds with it). And sqlite3 is 
close to being completely third-party maintained.

In contrast, the unittest module and importlib belong with the core distro.

So, I'm thinking that there were some precedents in cases where there
was a really good reason for separating the project (we don't even include
tkinter docs in our doc build), but that we should maintain a strong
preference for keeping the overall project organization intact.

ElementTree was fully folded into the project.  I think we should
follow that precedent and avoid balkanizing the python source
into many little project subtrees (worlds within a world).


Raymond