[Distutils] Where should I put tests when packaging python modules?

[Paul Moore]

On 6 October 2015 at 08:51, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
> They should be inside the module. That way, you can check an installed
> module is ok by running e.g. "python -m mypackage.tests". Any other
> choice makes testing installed modules more cumbersome.

One inconvenience with this is that if you use an external testing
framework like nose or pytest, you either need to make your project
depend on it, or you need to document that "python -m mypackage.tests"
has additional dependencies that are not installed by default.

With an external tests directory, the testing framework is just
another "development requirement".

It's only a minor point, conceded.

> The PyP"A" should definitely fix its sample project to reflect good
> practices.

+1 on the sample project following recommended guidelines. When I
originally wrote that project, the consensus (such as it was) was in
favour of tests outside the installed project. But that may have
simply reflected the group of people who responded at the time. It
does however have the advantage that it's consistent with how other
PyPA projects like pip and virtualenv structure their tests.

The big problem is that I don't think there *is* a consensus on best
practice. Both options have their supporters.

It would also be very easy to take the view that the PyPA sample
project should omit the test directory altogether, as it's a sample
for the *packaging* guide, and development processes like testing are
out of scope (that's why we don't include a documentation directory,
or recommend sphinx, for example). Personally, I think if we go to
that extreme, the sample project becomes useless as a "real world"
template, but maybe people wanting a starter project template should
be directed to projects such as cookiecutter instead.

Paul