replacing __dict__ with an OrderedDict

[Ulrich Eckhardt]

Hi!

The topic explains pretty much what I'm trying to do under Python 
2.7[1]. The reason for this is that I want dir(SomeType) to show the 
attributes in the order of their declaration. This in turn should 
hopefully make unittest execute my tests in the order of their 
declaration[2], so that the output becomes more readable and structured, 
just as my test code (hopefully) is.

I've been toying around with metaclasses, trying to replace __dict__ 
directly, or using type() to construct the class, but either I hit 
read-only attributes or the changes seem to be ignored.

As additional thought (but I'm not there yet), I guess that if I want 
dir(some_object) to be ordered similarly, I will also have to perform 
some steps on instance creation, not only on class creation, right?

Thanks for any suggestions!

Uli


[1] I'm stuck with 2.x for now, from what I found it would be easier 
using 3.x.

[2] No, don't tell me that the tests should run in any order. It's not 
the case that my tests depend on each other, but if one basic test for 
the presence of an API fails, the elaborate tests using that API will 
obviously fail, too, and I just want to take the first test that fails 
and analyse that instead of guessing the point to start debugging from 
the N failed tests.