[Python-Dev] unit testing bake-off

[Andy Robinson]

> Subject: Re: [Python-Dev] unit testing bake-off
> From: Guido van Rossum <guido@python.org>
> Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 14:17:27 -0500
> 
> There doesn't seem to be a lot of enthousiasm for a Unittest
> bakeoff...  Certainly I don't think I'll get to this myself before the
> conference.
> 
> How about the following though: talking of low-hanging fruit, Tim's
> doctest module is an excellent thing even if it isn't a unit testing
> framework!  (I found this out when I played with it -- it's real easy
> to get used to...)
> 
> Would anyone object against Tim checking this in?  Since it isn't a
> contender in the unit test bake-off, it shouldn't affect the outcome
> there at all.
> 
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

I think it should definitely go in.  Ditto with whatever testing
framework and documentation tools (pydoc etc.) shortly emerge
as "best of breed".  I spend my time on corporate consulting
projects, and saying things like "Python has standard tools for
unit testing and documentation" is even better than saying 
"We have standard tools for unit testing and documentation".

BTW, ReportLab has recently adopted PyUnit's unittest.py
It feels a bit Java-like to me - a few more lines of code
than needed - but it certainly works.   One key feature is
aggregating test suites; a big app we installed on a
customer site can run the test suite for itself, the ReportLab
library (whose test suite we are just getting to work on)
and four or five dependent utilities; another is that
people have heard of JUnit.

Just my 2p worth,
Andy Robinson