The very common directory structure for even a simple Python module seems to be to separate the unit tests into their own test
directory:
new_project/
antigravity/
antigravity.py
test/
test_antigravity.py
setup.py
etc.
for example see this Python project howto.
My question is simply What's the usual way of actually running the tests? I suspect this is obvious to everyone except me, but you can't just run python test_antigravity.py
from the test directory as its import antigravity
will fail as the module is not on the path.
I know I could modify PYTHONPATH and other search path related tricks, but I can't believe that's the simplest way – it's fine if you're the developer but not realistic to expect your users to use if they just want to check the tests are passing.
The other alternative is just to copy the test file into the other directory, but it seems a bit dumb and misses the point of having them in a separate directory to start with.
So, if you had just downloaded the source to my new project how would you run the unit tests? I'd prefer an answer that would let me say to my users: "To run the unit tests do X."
Best Answer
The best solution in my opinion is to use the
unittest
command line interface which will add the directory to thesys.path
so you don't have to (done in theTestLoader
class).For example for a directory structure like this:
You can just run:
For a directory structure like yours:
And in the test modules inside the
test
package, you can import theantigravity
package and its modules as usual:Running a single test module:
To run a single test module, in this case
test_antigravity.py
:Just reference the test module the same way you import it.
Running a single test case or test method:
Also you can run a single
TestCase
or a single test method:Running all tests:
You can also use test discovery which will discover and run all the tests for you, they must be modules or packages named
test*.py
(can be changed with the-p, --pattern
flag):This will run all the
test*.py
modules inside thetest
package.