[Python-Dev] setUpClass and setUpModule in unittest (original) (raw)

exarkun at twistedmatrix.com exarkun at twistedmatrix.com
Wed Feb 10 00:15:05 CET 2010

On 10:42 pm, fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk wrote:

On 09/02/2010 21:57, Ben Finney wrote:

Michael Foord<fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk> writes:

The next 'big' change to unittest will (may?) be the introduction of class and module level setUp and tearDown. This was discussed on Python-ideas and Guido supported them. They can be useful but are also very easy to abuse (too much shared state, monolithic test classes and modules). Several authors of other Python testing frameworks spoke up against them, but several users of test frameworks spoke up in favour of them. ;-) I think the perceived need for these is from people trying to use the 18unittest 19 API for test that are not unit tests.

That is, people have a need for integration tests (test this module's interaction with some other module) or system tests (test the behaviour of the whole running system). They then try to crowbar those tests into 18unittest 19 and finding it lacking, since 18unittest 19 is designed for tests of function-level units, without persistent state between those test cases. I've used unittest for long running functional and integration tests (in both desktop and web applications). The infrastructure it provides is great for this. Don't get hung up on the fact that it is called unittest. In fact for many users the biggest reason it isn't suitable for tests like these is the lack of shared fixture support - which is why the other Python test frameworks provide them and we are going to bring it into unittest.

For what it's worth, we just finished removing support for setUpClass and tearDownClass from Trial.

Jean-Paul

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