[Python-Dev] Testsuite dependency on _testcapi (original) (raw)

Thomas Wouters thomas at python.org
Fri Mar 9 20:44:56 CET 2012

While testing Python 2.7 internally (at Google) I noticed that (now that ImportErrors aren't automatically test skips) lots of tests fail if you don't have the _testcapi module. These tests are (as far as I've seen) properly marked as cpython-only, but when some wacko decides the _testcapi module shouldn't, for example, be shipped to a million machines[*] that are never going to use it, it would be nice to still run the tests that can be run without _testcapi. Any objections to fixing the tests to use test.support.import_module() for _testcapi and a 'needs_testcapi' skipping decorator?

To elaborate, we are also not shipping a couple of other modules (like distutils), but it's not unreasonable to expect those to exist (we modify the testsuite for that in our own builds only, instead, as well as making all our code deal with it.) The _testcapi module, however, is internal and meant for tests only, and used in quite a few tests (sometimes only in a single testfunction.)

[*] 'a million machines' is not the actual number -- I don't know the actual number (but I'm sure it's bigger than that), I'm just tossing out some large number.

Thomas Wouters <thomas at python.org>

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