For Pynie we're developing a bootstrapping test suite, which may be
useful to other implementations as they migrate to 3.x. It uses Robert
Collins' SubUnit, which decouples the testing framework from the tests.
So the testing framework runs in CPython (or any reasonably complete
Python 2.x implementation), while the tests run in Pynie. All that's
required to pass the first test is an implementation of 'print' and
string constants. The tests gradually build up in complexity through
numeric constants, operators, control structures, functions, etc, and
when we're done with them will walk all the way through to supporting
the full Python 3.x syntax. When the bootstrap is complete, the test
framework moves to Pynie too, integrated with the core CPython test suite.
It might eventually be useful to add to the py3k branch, though I
wouldn't include it in release tarballs. Or, if another repo is started
for the benchmark tests, the bootstrapping tests might be added there.
We'll contribute it to the PSF, anyway, so it's available. It does
depend on SubUnit, which isn't part of the standard library. I can strip
it down to a minimal subset of SubUnit's features and include them in
the test running script if that makes it more generally useful.
Right now the tests live in Lib/test/parrot in the Pynie repository, but
will likely move to Lib/test/bootstrap (suggestions on Python-friendly
naming welcome).
Allison
