Re: Current state of packaging Python software for Debian

[Robert Collins <robertc@robertcollins.net>]

On Sat, Jul 2, 2011 at 2:07 AM, Barry Warsaw <barry@python.org> wrote:
>>In some sub-communities, py.test or nosetests are the standard, not
>>setup.py test.
>
> Yes, but if I understand where Michael is taking unittest2, those can just be
> refactored to be plugins instead of separate standards.  Then `python setup.py
> test` can be the preferred and documented standards, while allowing those
> other command lines to also exist.

unittest2 is still a unittest runner at heart; the basic model is
sound to scale up to N processes and so forth (see tox or
testrespository for instance), but compatibility with arbitrary ways
of running is pretty tricky. See for instance the guts of the
following three runners: trial, django and zc.testing.testrunner.

All I'm saying is don't hold your breath: those communities could have
plugged into the original unittest compatibly but didn't - I think it
needs to be massively more clear *how* to do so, and on older Pythons
for those communities - they don't live on the edge ;) - for
one-runner-with-plugins to reach that point.

As a data point, in the java world multiple runners is still the case,
with some common interop on output format.

-Rob