[Python-Dev] feature freeze questions (original) (raw)

Chris Jerdonek chris.jerdonek at gmail.com
Sat Jul 28 12:25:24 CEST 2012

On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 4:29 PM, Benjamin Peterson <benjamin at python.org> wrote:

(2) When adding new tests (e.g. in the course of fixing a bug or increasing test coverage), are we allowed to refactor other tests so that supporting test code can be shared? Or should the tests be added in a less DRY fashion and refactored only after the branch goes back to pre-alpha? You can do basically anything you want to tests just as long as you don't make them less stable.

Also, this response seems somewhat at odds to the response I got to a patch that refactors part of regrest, fixes some bugs in it, and adds its first unit tests (in particular, increasing code coverage):

http://bugs.python.org/issue15302

The regrtest module only affects tests (which I would think qualifies it as "tests"), and this is borne out by the following documentation note (which is essentially the same as the note for test.support):

"Note: The test package is meant for internal use by Python only. It is documented for the benefit of the core developers of Python. Any use of this package outside of Python’s standard library is discouraged as code mentioned here can change or be removed without notice between releases of Python.

"The test package contains all regression tests for Python as well as the modules test.support and test.regrtest. test.support is used to enhance your tests while test.regrtest drives the testing suite."

(from http://docs.python.org/dev/library/test.html#module-test )

--Chris

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