discover 0.1.0

This is the test discovery mechanism and load_tests protocol for unittest backported from Python 2.7 to work with Python 2.4 or more recent.

discover can be installed with pip or easy_install. After installing switch the current directory to the top level directory of your project and run:

python -m discover
python discover.py

This will discover all tests (with certain restrictions) from the current directory. The discover module has several options to control its behavior (full usage options are displayed with python -m discover -h):

Usage: discover.py [options]

Options:
  -v, --verbose    Verbose output
  -s directory     Directory to start discovery ('.' default)
  -p pattern       Pattern to match test files ('test*.py' default)
  -t directory     Top level directory of project (default to
                   start directory)

For test discovery all test modules must be importable from the top
level directory of the project.

For example to use a different pattern for matching test modules run:

python -m discover -p '*test.py'

(Remember to put quotes around the test pattern or shells like bash will do shell expansion rather than passing the pattern through to discover.)

Test discovery is implemented in discover.DiscoveringTestLoader.discover. As well as using discover as a command line script you can import DiscoveringTestLoader, which is a subclass of unittest.TestLoader, and use it in your test framework.

This method finds and returns all test modules from the specified start directory, recursing into subdirectories to find them. Only test files that match pattern will be loaded. (Using shell style pattern matching.)

All test modules must be importable from the top level of the project. If the start directory is not the top level directory then the top level directory must be specified separately.

The load_tests protocol allows test modules and packages to customize how they are loaded. This is implemented in discover.DiscoveringTestLoader.loadTestsFromModule. If a test module defines a load_tests function then tests are loaded from the module by calling load_tests with three arguments: loader, standard_tests, None.

If a test package name (directory with __init__.py) matches the pattern then the package will be checked for a load_tests function. If this exists then it will be called with loader, tests, pattern.

If load_tests exists then discovery does not recurse into the package, load_tests is responsible for loading all tests in the package.

The pattern is deliberately not stored as a loader attribute so that packages can continue discovery themselves. top_level_dir is stored so load_tests does not need to pass this argument in to loader.discover().

discover.py is maintained in a google code project (where bugs and feature requests should be posted): http://code.google.com/p/unittest-ext/

The latest development version of discover.py can be found at: http://code.google.com/p/unittest-ext/source/browse/trunk/discover.py