[unittest] Run setUp only once

[Roy Smith]

In article <871w1cr49a.fsf at nokile.rath.org>,
 Nikolaus Rath <Nikolaus at rath.org> wrote:

> But at least this variation doesn't work, because unittest apparently
> also creates two separate TwoTests instances for the two tests. Isn't
> there some way to convince unittest to reuse the same instance instead
> of trying to solve the problem in the test code itself?

Nope.  It's a fundamental part of the Xunit design that every test gets a 
complete, virgin environment in which to run.

The sample code that Jean-Paul gave you:

>    class TwoTests(unittest.TestCase):
>        setUpResult = None
>
>        def setUp(self):
>            if self.setUpResult is None:
>                self.setUpResult = computeIt()

does indeed create two instances of TwoTests, but it only calls computeIt() 
once, into which (presumably) all the expensive stuff has been refactored.  

This is, of course, a violation of the rule that says each test must run in 
a clean environment, but if you want to violate that rule, that's up to 
you.  Presumably you know your system and have made an informed decision as 
a consenting adult that you understand the risks and this is what you want 
to do.

Another variation on this would be to take this code out of setUp(), and 
instead create a singleton class (there's a good recipe for this on active 
state) which does your shared setup.  Then in the two tests which need 
this, explicitly call the singleton factory.  I think this is a little 
cleaner than Jean-Paul's way, because at least it isolates the shared stuff 
to exactly the two tests which need it.