ANN: pry unit testing framework

[BJörn Lindqvist]

On Sat, Apr 5, 2008 at 12:54 PM, Aldo Cortesi <aldo at nullcube.com> wrote:
> Thus spake Matthieu Brucher (matthieu.brucher at gmail.com):
>
>
>  > How does it compare to the nose framework ?
>
>  As far as the base unit testing functionality is concerned, I think
>  they try to address similar problems. Both have assert-based testing
>  with inspection and re-parsing of assert exceptions for better error
>  messages. Both try to provide better fixture management. Both make
>  programmatic test generation easier. Both have a command-line tool for
>  running and gathering tests.
>
>  I like nose, but I'm biased, and of course I think Pry has some
>  advantages. One difference I'd point out is Pry's tree-based test
>  structure, which provides a number of conveniences and features (much
>  nicer test selection from the command line, for instance).

Isn't nose tree-based too? You can select both single test-cases
suites or directories to run.

Anyway, I don't think comparisions with nose is fair, because nose is
the best of the best and all other test runners fall short of it. :)
nose and nose-like test runners use automatic test case discovery, so
that you don't have to write redundant boilerplate like in PyUnit and
PyUnit-like frameworks. To take an example from Pry's manual:

import libpry

class MySuite(libpry.AutoTree):
    def setUpAll(self):
        self.all_fixture = True

    def tearDownAll(self):
        self.all_fixture = False

    def setUp(self):
        self.fixture = True

    def tearDown(self):
        self.fixture = False

    def test_one(self):
        assert self.fixture
        assert self.all_fixture

tests = [
    MySuite()
]

in those, this could be written like this:

class Empty: pass
obj = Empty()

def setup():
    obj.all_fixture = True

def setup_func():
   obj.fixture = True

def teardown():
    obj.all_fixture = False

def teardown_func():
    obj.fixture = False

@with_setup(setup_func, teardown_func)
def test_one():
    assert self.fixture
    assert self.all_fixture


nose gives you much more bang per line of code.


-- 
mvh Björn