[Python-Dev] Python Language Summit at PyCon: Agenda

[Barry Warsaw]

On Mar 04, 2013, at 05:04 PM, Brett Cannon wrote:

>Sure, but that has nothing to do with programmatic package discovery.
>That's something you will have to do as a person in making a qualitative
>decision along the same lines as API design. Flipping a bit in a config
>file saying "I have tests" doesn't say much beyond you flipped a bit, e.g.
>no idea on coverage, quality, etc.

What I'm looking for is something that automated tools can use to easily
discover how to run a package's tests.  I want it to be dead simple for
developers of a package to declare how their tests are to be run, and what
extra dependencies they might need.  It seems like PEP 426 only addresses the
latter.  Maybe that's fine and a different PEP is needed to describe automated
test discover, but I still think it's an important use case.

Imagine:

 * Every time you upload a package to PyPI, snakebite runs your test suite on
   a variety of Python versions and platforms.  You get a nice link to the
   Jenkins results so you and your users get a good sense of overall package
   quality.

 * You have an automated gatekeeper that will prevent commits or uploads if
   your coverage or test results get worse instead of better.

 * Distro packagers can build tools that auto-discover the tests so that they
   are run automatically when the package is built, ensuring high quality
   packages specifically targeted to those distros.

As a community, we know how important tests are, so I think our tools should
reflect that and make it easy for those tests to be expressed.  As a selfish
side-effect, I want to reduce the amount of guesswork I need to perform in
order to know how to run a package's test when I `$vcs clone` their
repository. ;)

Cheers,
-Barry
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