[Python-Dev] Proposed unittest changes

[Guido van Rossum]

On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 5:13 PM, Raymond Hettinger <python at rcn.com> wrote:
> It takes about one day of using py.test to realize have much
> cleaner and more readable its syntax is.  Also, writing the
> tests is *much* more pleasant.  It has the same clean, clear
> joy as writing regular python code.  By comparison, the code
> using unittest.py is javaesque.   I've written tons of test with
> unittest.py and and find it to be joyless.

I, too, have written tons of tests with unittest.py (and Google's
extensions, which follow the same style), and reviewed even more. I
agree that this is pretty joyless, but I'm not at all sure that the
unittest API is the reason. It seems to me that a main problem with
writing test code is and will always remain due to the need to use
mocks, stubs and other similar techniques (e.g. dependency injection).
Typical test code that I've written or reviewed spends more time
setting up the input conditions for testing than it spends checking
the results. Ten lines of mocking code to one self.assertEqual() call
seems typical.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)