[Python-Dev] Does trace modules have a unit test? (original) (raw)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Mon Jul 19 12:58:54 CEST 2010

On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 2:23 PM, Alexander Belopolsky <alexander.belopolsky at gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 12:21 AM, Alexander Belopolsky <alexander.belopolsky at gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 12:12 AM, Eli Bendersky <eliben at gmail.com> wrote: ..

stdout output can be captured, but what about the .cover files? Can a Python unit test create temporary files in tmp/ (or somewhere else) as part of its testing, or is this forbidden?

That's perfectly fine.  Grep in the Lib/test directory for 'tempfile.mkdtemp()' to see examples. Actually the first hit is Lib/test/scripthelper.py which contains several utilities that you may find useful.

Yeah, the script_helper.temp_dir CM is especially handy for mucking about on the filesystem.

test_cmd_line_script.py and test_runpy.py are other places to look for inspiration on ways to make heavy use of the filesystem for testing without leaving junk behind when the test is over (script_helper was actually born by refactoring the helpers from those two test suites out to a common module).

I really should get back to the issue about a temp_dir equivalent worthy of inclusion in the tempfile module at some point, though (there's an unfortunate corner case relating to interpreter shutdown and generators or explicit invocation of enter that causes problems for the script_helper.temp_dir incarnation. The test suite avoids that corner case naturally, but a tempfile.tempdir CM needs to cope with it)

Cheers, Nick.

-- Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia

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