On a slight tangent, I'd be happier if we could move away from the setUp/tearDown model and move towards __enter__/__exit__. The existing convention comes from a time before the with statement - extending it further doesn't seem like it would be taking things in the right direction. By allowing test suites to identify context managers that are invoked by the test framework at various points, it allows the setup/teardown code to be cleanly separated from the test classes themselves. E.g. the test framework might promise to do the following for each test: with module_cm(test_instance): # However identified with class_cm(test_instance): # However identified with test_instance: # ** test_instance.test_method() (** Assuming the addition of "def __enter__(self): self.setUp()" and "def __exit__(self, *args): self.tearDown()" to unittest.TestCase for backwards compatibility) Caching of expensive state on the module and class context managers would then be the prerogative of those context managers rather than the responsibility of the test cases themselves. Cheers, Nick. -- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia ---------------------------------------------------------------