[Python-ideas] Adding a test discovery into Python

[Guilherme Polo]

Hi,

I believe it would be good to include a test discovery into Python,
right now I notice all the following packages:

bsdbb, ctypes, distutils, email, json, lib2to3 and lib-tk (tkinter in py3k)

duplicate some form of test discovery that works for each one of them
(there are also sqlite3 tests, but they are not using a real "test
discovery"). In the future it is very likely that this "duplication
count" increases, since from time to time new modules and packages get
into Python. I can also feel the "idlelib" package starting getting
tests, just making things worse.

External packages would benefit from it too. Right now you either
duplicate the test discovery once more (because your project is small
enough that you don't want to use something specific for that), or you
use nose, trial, py.test or whatever looks better for you.

So.. is there any chance we can enter in agreement what features would
be useful in a test discovery that could be included with Python ? I
for myself do not have fancy wishes for this one, I would be happy
with something that would collect unittests, inside packages and
subpackages, with some fixed patterns and let me run them with
test.test_support.run_unittests, or maybe something that would collect
unittests and doctests and have something like run_tests in
test.test_support. But then I believe this wouldn't be good enough to
substitute any of the current tools, making the addition mostly
useless.

Thanks for reading,

-- 
-- Guilherme H. Polo Goncalves