How does 'manage.py test' work? (pdb problem)

Question

I develop my django app on a mac with the dev server. When I run manage.py test I am able to break execution with pdb (as I can also when just running the site).

When I push the app to my linux production server (Ubuntu) running apache2/nginx pdb it no longer works on the site. It throws a BdbQuit Exception. I figured it would work when I ran manage.py test, but was surprised to find that the test just skipped over the pdb.set_trace() calls without stopping for them.

This seems to imply that manage.py test is running over the webserver, but that seems counter-intuitive, as my test code is pure python without any HTTP.

If manage.py test is hooking into the webserver is there a way for me to tell it to use the dev server?

I've tried installing ipdb, btw, and it does the same thing.

Answer 1

You've somehow diagnosed the problem wrongly. It simply doesn't make sense to say 'manage.py test is running over the webserver'. Your Django installation doesn't even know there's a webserver present, unless it's actually called by that webserver via WSGI - which obviously isn't the case when you're running tests via manage.py.

Are you sure your tests are being run correctly at all? Try putting a self.assertTrue(False) into the tests that have the call to pdb, to see if they fail as you expect - try it with the assertion alternately before and after the pdb and see what happens.