[Python-ideas] Easily reference a single unittest from cmdline

[Giampaolo Rodola']

During the development process it is very common to implement a new
functionality, write a test for it and then run tests.
I don't want to run *all* tests though, but only the new one which I just wrote.
Currently unittest module lets you do this via cmdline with:

python -m unittest test.test_module.TestClass.test_method

This is not very practical though as you have to figure out the name
of the module (easy) and the name of the test class (something which I
*never* remember).

Proposal is to allow a wildcard notation like this:

python -m unittest test.test_module.*test_method*
python -m unittest *test_method*

What I expect from unittest is to execute only the test methods
matching "*test_method*".

This is related to an old proposal I raised 3 years ago:
https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/2010-August/007992.html
After that dicussion I ended up coming up with a decorator for skipping tests:
http://code.activestate.com/recipes/578234-unittestskip_others-decorator/?in=user-4178764
...but I never find it really practical and I ended up abandoning it.

In retrospective, I think the cmdline is the right place from where
such a thing should be controlled.

Thoughts?

--- Giampaolo
https://code.google.com/p/pyftpdlib/
https://code.google.com/p/psutil/
https://code.google.com/p/pysendfile/