[Python-Dev] unittest: shortDescription, _TextTestResult and other issues

[Michael Foord]

On 10/02/2010 01:07, Ben Finney wrote:
> Michael Foord<fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk>  writes:
>
>    
>> On 09/02/2010 21:50, Ben Finney wrote:
>>      
>>> I understood the point of ‘TestCase.shortDescription’, and indeed
>>> the point of that particular name, was to be clear that some *other*
>>> text could be the short description for the test case. Indeed, this
>>> is what you've come up with: a different implementation for
>>> generating a short description.
>>>        
>> Given that the change broke something, and the desired effect can be
>> gained with a different change, I don't really see a downside to the
>> change I'm proposing (reverting shortDescription and moving the code
>> that adds the test name to TestResult).
>>      
> What you describe (adding the class and method name when reporting
> the test) sounds like it belongs in the TestRunner, since it's more a
> case of “give me more information about the test result”.
>    
The code for giving information about individual test results is the 
TestResult. The TestRunner knows nothing about each individual result 
(or even about each individual test as it happens). The TestRunner is 
responsible for the whole test run, the TestCase runs individual tests 
and the TestResult reports (or holds) individual test results (at the 
behest of the TestCase).

Given this structure it is not possible for test descriptions to be the 
responsibility of the TestRunner and I don't feel like re-structuring 
unittest today. :-)

Michael

> That is, a TestRunner that reports each result *with* the extra
> information would be useful, for some cases, but should not modify the
> TestResult instance to do that.
>
> Am I right that this approach would avoid breakage in the case of
> frameworks that don't expect their TestRunner to behave that way? e.g.
> Twisted could simply use the TestRunner that doesn't behave this way,
> and (since the TestResult instances aren't any different) continue to
> get the expected behaviour.
>
>    


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