[Python-ideas] doctest

[Devin Jeanpierre]

On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 8:54 PM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
> A published version of doctest2 that was designed to be suitable for
> eventual incorporation back into doctest itself (i.e. by maintaining
> backwards compatibility) sounds like it would be quite popular, and
> would route around the fact that enhancing it isn't high on the
> priority list for the current core development team.

Heh, "quite popular". Whenever I mention doctest2, people think of
doctest. And apparently people really dislike doctest. The way I try
to address the immediate fear response is, "sure, doctest is terrible
-- why do you think I'm forking it? ;)"; however, I think popularity
would be difficult outside of the existing doctest user base.


P.S., some uninvited advice to would-be forkers:

- Make the starting commit of your repository identical to the
original module that you're forking, to make tracking the original
module easier.
- On that note, also write down the hg revision of the module that
you're forking so that you can find later changes.
- Immediately change the name of your forked module so that unit tests
only run against it rather than accidentally testing the original
module. (Also, delete the original from your Python to be sure you
edited the test cases right too. And, uh, don't forget the pyc.)

Maybe these are obvious to everyone else, but I'd never forked
anything before, and so I made all those mistakes. The first dozen or
two commits are full of sad things.

-- Devin