CodingProjectIdeas/TestingImprovements

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• Update all old tests to use unittest or doctest; see the output directory in svn to see what old tests still exist (minus any conversions already in Python’s issue tracker). [Done at PyCon 2008]

• Develop toolchain to make testing better and more helpful to non-CPython implementations.

  • Function to specify what module is being tested. This allows ImportErrors for modules required for testing to cause the test to fail, not skip the testing.

  • Function to specify what OSs the module being tested is expected to work on.

  • Function to specify if the module being tested is “optional” (i.e., reasonable to not have built).

  • Decorators (method and class) to classify tests; OS, known failure, implementation detail or not, etc. Helpful for PyPy et. al. so they know they don’t need to test something (e.g., refcount specifics).

  • Make unittest not print the docstring of a test instead of the method name when running a test.

• Create effective and stable tests for server/client bits of the standard library.