[TIP] A rare philosophical thought

[Carl Trachte]

On 8/3/08, Michael Foord <fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk> wrote:
> C. Titus Brown wrote:
>
> > -> >  ...and I have no objection to unittest remaining in the stdlib.  I
> don't
> > -> >  know that anyone does.
> > -> -> You called it evil, with caps and exclamation marks.  I took it as a
> > -> mandate to kill.  Clearly you believe there's a possibility for
> > -> redemption.
> >
> > There's simply no way such a backwards incompatibility would be
> > introduced into Python.  Were it a perfect world, I think something
> > better than unittest would magically replace unittest and everyone's
> > code would be automatically rewritten to use it, but... that's not
> > going to happen :)
> >
> > I think having unittest as the only "standard" module in the library is
> > bad, because it is difficult to understand and use if you are new to the
> > concept of testing, AND because there are alternatives that are
> > demonstrably viable.
> >
> > --t
> >
> >
>  It's not the only one, there is also doctest and I think the chances of
> getting a third testing library in the standard library are pretty slim.

I am actually still hopeful for nose, in spite of my arguments above.
IIRC, you (Michael) mentioned evil hackery in nose further up in the
thread.  I wouldn't know the difference between evil and good hackery
if they came up to me and shook my hand.
Still, where there's a will, there's a way.  The present CPython state
where nose is quasi-backward compatible with unittest seems pretty
compelling to me.  It sure would make my life in IronPython easier.
I will shut up now; back to lurking . . . :-|

>
>
>  Michael
>
>  --
>  http://www.ironpythoninaction.com/
>
>