On 2 Aug 2013, at 14:51, Matt McClure <matthewlmcclure@gmail.com> wrote:

It seems unittest.TestSuite holds references to unittest.TestCase instances after the test runs, until the test suite finishes. In a large suite, where the TestCase instances consume memory during execution, that can lead to exhausting all available memory and the OS killing the test process.

Well individual tests not releasing resources could be seen as a bug in those tests.

That aside, there's an open bug for this with some discussion and a proposed fix:

The agreed on approach just needs doing.

What do you think of a change like this?

$ hg diff

diff -r 3bd55ec317a7 Lib/unittest/suite.py

--- a/Lib/unittest/suite.py Thu Aug 01 23:57:21 2013 +0200

+++ b/Lib/unittest/suite.py Fri Aug 02 07:42:22 2013 -0400

@@ -90,7 +90,12 @@

if getattr(result, '_testRunEntered', False) is False:

result._testRunEntered = topLevel = True

- for test in self:

+ while True:

+ try:

+ test = self._tests.pop(0)

+ except IndexError:

+ break

if result.shouldStop:

break

See also the conversation on django-developers[1] that led me here.

[1]: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/django-developers/XUMetDSGVT0

--
Matt McClure
http://matthewlmcclure.com
http://www.mapmyfitness.com/profile/matthewlmcclure