On Feb 17, 2012 4:12 PM, "Nick Coghlan" <ncoghlan@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 7:57 AM, Mark Janssen <dreamingforward@gmail.com>
wrote:
Anyway... of course patches welcome, yes... ;^)
Not really. doctest is for *testing code example in docs*. If you try to use it for more than that, it's likely to drive you up the wall, so proposals to make it more than it is usually don't get a great reception (docs patches to make it's limitations clearer are generally welcome, though). The stdib solution for test driven development is unittest (the vast majority of our own regression suite is written that way - only a small proportion uses doctest).
This pessimistic attitude is why doctest is challenging to work with at times, not anything to do with doctest's actual model. The constant criticisms of doctest keep contributors away, and keep its many resolvable problems from being resolved.
An interesting third party alternative that has been created recently is behave: http://crate.io/packages/behave/
This style of test is why it's so sad that doctest is ignored and unmaintained. It's based on testing patterns developed by people who care to promote what they are doing, but I'm of the strong opinion that they are inferior to doctest. Ian