[Python-Dev] fixing tests on windows (original) (raw)

Tim Golden mail at timgolden.me.uk
Wed Apr 2 11:24:22 CEST 2008

Nick Coghlan wrote:

Tim Golden wrote:

I admit: this did occur to me on the train this am. While I try to think of a robust way to handle this, other people have proposed variations on pid-based / tempdir based filenames instead of the same name for each test. In principle this sounds good to me, but I'm not at all well-placed to assess the impact it might have on the unit tests in general. Personally, I've never really understood the purpose of testsupport.TESTFN. Whenever I've needed a temporary file for a test, I just use the tempfile module (e.g. testcmdlinescript, testrunpy). Tests using that module don't care if the old files take 'a while' to get deleted on Windows, as tempfile uses a different name each time anyway. Is using a fixed TESTFN just an old approach that predates the existence of a robust tempfile module in the standard library?

I'm a neophyte when it comes to core development, so I've simply cloned existing tests, assumed that there was some kind of (possibly unwritten) standard which used test_support.TESTFN. As I look at it, though it seems a slightly odd choice, although it has variants for testing unicode filenames specifically which I imagine are useful in some places.

I'm perfectly happy to run through the test suite, patching it one way or another. The trouble is that I've little confidence that I can assess whether or not such a change will have affected the actual meaning of a test. And, since these are tests, Quis custodiet...?

TJG

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list