Crispin:

OK. Having a closer look, its not that looping call doesn't work, its that there is some unknown number of "reactor pumps" between starting the test, and finishing it. What I need is a way for the reactor to be pumping away while a particular test function of a testcase continues working. As an example, here is a non-working test case. Notice the comment "#what to do here to pump the reactor?".

...

while task.alive: pass #what to do here to pump the reactor?

This won't work because as long as the tasklet is alive (scheduled, paused, or blocked), you will be in a tight loop. And if that function is not running in the reactor, then the reactor will starve. If you are waiting to see if the tasklet finished, write a synchronizer. Cheers, Andrew