[TIP] Testing dependencies

[C. Titus Brown]

On Sun, Sep 06, 2009 at 02:55:31PM -0400, Alfredo Deza wrote:
-> Hi,
-> 
-> I am currently working in a small project that has a couple of dependencies.
-> 
-> The problem is I do not need them directly (no need to import them at any
-> point) because I call those dependencies with subprocess.Popen
-> 
-> My current approach is to try an import anyway and fail with an error
-> message if it could not import the module:
-> 
-> try:
->     import dependency_1
->     import dependency_2
-> except Exception, e:
->     print "DependencyError: %s" % e
-> 
-> Is it better to put this within the tests directory along with the other
-> tests?
-> 
-> Or maybe have them in both places: one in the main source code and the other
-> one in the tests directory?

What problems are you running into with the current approach -- why do
you feel the need to change?

I'd probably trying an import in the main package & tests, and
printing a warning if that fails; and then test the real dependency in
your tests that call subprocess.  This is because there are reasons why
subprocess might succeed but import might fail.

cheers,
--t
-- 
C. Titus Brown, ctb at msu.edu