Unit testing daemon creation

[Ben Finney]

Howdy all,

I'm in the process of creating a daemon program using Python. I know
that the program needs to 'os.fork()', then branch based on the return
value and either exit (if the parent) or continue (if the child).

How can I unit test that? That is to say, how can I programmatically
test that functionality of daemonisation from an external module which
imports the daemon module for testing?

I could be hackish and simply clobber the existing 'os.fork' for the
purpose of the unit test, making a stub function that returns the
appropriate values for the test. Is there a better way?

-- 
 \            "Beware of and eschew pompous prolixity."  -- Charles A. |
  `\                                                         Beardsley |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney