VirtualTam's bookmarks

1. Python unit testing frameworks: Nose, Pytest 2015-02-13

   tags: code, coverage, feature, nose, programming/python, programming/python/pytest, programming/testing, quality, unit

   [ permalink ]

   Python's built-in unittest module is quite cool, but a bit limited and way too verbose (read: it's quite not easy to incite developers to write unit tests)

   I'm currently looking for more dev-friendly solutions, the key points being:

   • writing test code should be easy and straight-forward -keep the focus on "what to test" instead of "how to transcribe a process to a test"
   • parallelization! -we, spoiled developers, should make good use of our way-too-many-cores build machines...
   • complete feature set!
     • we don't want to just run tests...
     • coverage reports (find dead/weak/untested code sections)
     • output formatting (JUnit-XML seems to be quite a common format out there)

   There seem to be 3 solutions in Python:

   • stock unittest + project-dependent customizations / test helpers
   • nosetests
   • py.test

   And 2 ways of gettings things done:

   • keeping things stock: no external dependency, project-specific implementation...
   • using a test framework: one more module in your (test) virtualenv, more concise tests, more features (// run, code coverage, etc.)

   Some links:

   • http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22856638/nose-vs-pytest-what-are-the-subjective-differences-that-should-make-me-pick
   • http://helixyte.org/2014/04/unit-testing-adventures-moving-from-nose-to-pytest/
   • http://lists.idyll.org/pipermail/testing-in-python/2013-August/005624.html
2. nose: python testing helper 2015-01-04

   tags: continuous-integration, continuous-integration/jenkins, coverage, parallel, programming/python, programming/testing, unit

   [ permalink ]

   Includes support for Coverage, Xunit and other cool stuff ;-) Oh, and there is parallel testing, too \o/

   nosetests --with-coverage --cover-erase --cover-tests --cover-html --cover-html-dir=htmlcov --with-xunit --xunit-file=unit.xml

   via http://www.alexconrad.org/2011/10/jenkins-and-python.html