[Python-Dev] unittest output (original) (raw)

Thomas Heller theller at python.net
Wed Dec 3 04:36:59 EST 2003

"Raymond Hettinger" <raymond.hettinger at verizon.net> writes:

When a test fails, it is accompanied by tracebacks that include all the processing within the unittest module itself. This makes it darned difficult to see at a glance what went wrong. If like me, you use unittest as part of the development process, then you run it hundreds of times each week and this eyesore gets to be a real PITA.

I don't recall when or where, but someone has proposed a fix. But, like many great ideas, it got stymied because someone, somewhere has a use for the rest of the traceback. Also, a developer raised the (IMO red herring) issue -- what if there is a bug in the unittest module, how would you track it.

Well, distutils being mainly a user tool tries it's best to hide tracebacks from the user, and only prints a single 'error: ...' line. But it pays attention to a DISTUTILS_DEBUG env var, which will enable showing the full tracebacks. IIRC.

Thomas

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