[py-dev] the seeming need of task-based build-tool properties in py.test

[holger krekel]

Hey Ronny, 

On Mon, Feb 15, 2010 at 11:38 +0100, Ronny Pfannschmidt wrote:
> as needs like dependend tests, checking the need for test execution and
> the changes in distribution emerge,

for everybodies information, this is partly a reference to IRC discussions. 

> it seems like we are going tinto the direction of a task-based build
> tool where each test item is a 'task' that may depend on other tasks and
> has possible checked preconditions for being executed.

not sure i agree.  I'd like to keep the base functionality and py.test tool
simple and rather work on higher level goals in separate projects
and also include support for nose and unittests there. 

There are various build approaches ('doit' is one interesting one
recently mentioned here) and i'd like to leverage those. 

That being said, I see overlap on testing and deployment. 
Those who were at Pycon 2009 and EuroPython know that i regard it
as natural to have (functional) testing and deployment of software 
converge in the future.  After all deployment is a kind of a test 
usually involving humans interacting with the software.  And the work done
to prepare functional tests involves automatically installing software.  
It makes sense to me to re-use the same techniques (e.g. virtualenv, 
distutils installs, build-tools etc.) for preparing automated test 
runs and for deploying code. 

> i just wanted to throw that at the ml so people can discuss.

heh, please try to not post too many mails about details or
ideas here, though.  After all it's more the execution of ideas 
which counts rather than dropping them :) 

cheers & all the best,
holger