[Python-ideas] Please consider adding context manager versions of setUp/tearDown to unittest.TestCase

[Nick Coghlan]

On 23 August 2017 at 08:20, rymg19 at gmail.com <rymg19 at gmail.com> wrote:
> TBH you're completely right. Every time I see someone using unittest
> andItsHorriblyUnpythonicNames, I want to kill a camel.
>
> Sometimes, though, I feel like part of the struggle is the alternative. If
> you dislike unittest, but pytest is too "magical" for you, what do you use?
> Many Python testing tools like nose are just test *runners*, so you still
> need something else. In the end, many just end up back at unittest, maybe
> with nose on top.

A snake_case helper API for unittest that I personally like is
hamcrest, since that also separates out the definition of testing
assertions from being part of a test case:
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/PyHamcrest

Introducing such a split natively into unittest is definitely
attractive, but would currently be difficult due to the way that some
features like self.maxDiff and self.subTest work.

However, PEP 550's execution contexts may provide a way to track the
test state reliably that's independent of being a method on a test
case instance, in which case it would become feasible to offer a more
procedural interface in addition to the current visibly
object-oriented one.

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia