Python unittest and discovery

Question

I have directories, which contain files named like: 'test_foo.py'

Each file is a test case.

I would like to 1) run all the tests in a directory from the command line. I am using unittest2, since we are running Python 2.5.1. From one of these directories I tried typing this at the commandline:

python -m unittest2 discover -p 'test_*.py'

and several different variants. I get no error, but nothing happens. I was expecting all the tests within all the test cases in that directory to run and get results.

2) I also tried having a script in the directory where I did this:

loader = unittest2.TestLoader()
t = loader.discover('.')

If I print the t variable, I can see my test cases, but from the docs I can't figure out what to do with the loader object once I have it.

Answer 1

I highly recommend using nose for this. It will detect and run your tests.

Answer 2

Give how you're trying to use unittest2 from the command line on Python< 2.7`, I think you may have missed the note on this page:

Note

Command line usage

In Python 2.7 you invoke the unittest command line features (including test discover) with python -m unittest . As unittest is a package, and the ability to invoke packages with python -m ... is new in Python 2.7, we can't do this for unittest2.

Instead unittest2 comes with a script unit2. Command line usage:

unit2 discover unit2 -v test_module There is also a copy of this script called unit2.py, useful for Windows which uses file-extensions rather than shebang lines to determine what program to execute files with. Both of these scripts are installed by distutils.

Have you tried the unit2 script which this note recommends as the alternative for older Pythons to the "run package as main script" feature of Python 2.7? Maybe its sources could also be useful to find out exactly how to discover-and-run tests from your own code, if that's what you'd rather do.