[Python-Dev] Testsuite dependency on _testcapi

[Thomas Wouters]

While testing Python 2.7 internally (at Google) I noticed that (now that
ImportErrors aren't automatically test skips) lots of tests fail if you
don't have the _testcapi module. These tests are (as far as I've seen)
properly marked as cpython-only, but when some wacko decides the _testcapi
module shouldn't, for example, be shipped to a million machines[*] that are
never going to use it, it would be nice to still run the tests that can be
run without _testcapi. Any objections to fixing the tests to use
test.support.import_module() for _testcapi and a 'needs_testcapi' skipping
decorator?

To elaborate, we are also not shipping a couple of other modules (like
distutils), but it's not unreasonable to expect those to exist (we modify
the testsuite for that in our own builds only, instead, as well as making
all our code deal with it.) The _testcapi module, however, is internal
*and* meant for tests only, and used in quite a few tests (sometimes only
in a single testfunction.)

[*] 'a million machines' is not the actual number -- I don't know the
actual number (but I'm sure it's bigger than that), I'm just tossing out
some large number.
-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at python.org>

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