[Python-Dev] unittest Suggestions

[Antoine Pitrou]

Barry Warsaw <barry <at> python.org> writes:
> The goal  
> should be to produce something like a unittest-ng, distribute it via  
> the Cheeseshop, and gather consensus around it for possible inclusion  
> in Python 2.7/3.1.

There is already unittest, nose, py.test, trial... perhaps others I don't know
of. I fear writing yet another testing framework from the ground-up will lead to
more bikeshedding and less focussed discussion (see some testing-in-python
threads for an example :-)).

nose itself is not a completely independent piece of work but "a discovery-based
unittest extension" (although a very big extension!). For that reason, Michael
Foord's suggestion to gradually modernize and improve the stdlib unittest sounds
reasonable to me: it allows to be more focussed, keep backwards compatibility,
and also to decide and implement changes piecewise - avoiding the blank sheet
effect where people all push for wild ideas and radically new concepts (tm).

(however, nose is LGPL-licensed so it would not be suitable for direct reuse of
large chunks of code in the stdlib, unless the authors agree for a relicensing)