[Python-Dev] Single .py file contains submodule?

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Kevin Butler wrote:
> M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
>  > Kevin Butler wrote:
>  > > from unittest.assertions import *
>  >
> 
>> That's bad style (at least for modules which don't only include
>> constants). Why would you want to enable this ?
> 
> 
> :-)
> 
> - In general, if you provide a submodule, users can do 'from unittest 
> import assertions' or 'import unittest.assertions as test' or some such. 
> Just having a grundle of top-level symbols in a module is less 
> convenient than appropriate grouping into submodules.
> 
> - The Style Guide suggests prefixing methods that are intended for use 
> with 'import *', and these functions are 'test*' or 'assert*'...
> 
> - For test code, I tend to be a bit more liberal with 'import *', 
> because in general, test code is pretty clear about what it is exercising.
> 
> - The assertion methods are very independent of the other TestCase 
> methods, and can be very useful for non-TestCase methods. This low 
> coupling/high cohesion suggests organizing them together, but currently 
> there's no convenient way to get at them separately. And since the 
> methods really have little to do with an object instance, I find the 
> 'self.assert*' construct distracting, although I like self.* in most cases.

I don't understand what you're after here, but if it's
about making unittest a package and distributing the
various bits in submodules of the package with the
__init__.py file importing all of them... that's a way
to approach the problem (if there is any ;-).

I usually refactor modules that way as soon as they become too large
to handle -- however, most of the times this is more an editing
problem than a real need for a distributed design :-)

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
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