[TIP] nose2 backwards compatibility questions

[Michael Foord]

On 10/08/2010 17:09, Kumar McMillan wrote:
> [snip...]
>    
>> 2) Is attempting to provide compatibilty with nose 0.9/0.10 plugins
>> (found via the setuptools entry points) worthwhile, even if it will be
>> limited? It definitely will be, maybe as limited as allowing
>> configuration only through the command line *or* only through config
>> files, but not both. Is it worth spending the nontrivial amount of
>> time that will be required to see if this will work?
>>
>>      
> I doubt this is worthwhile.  It sounds like there will be a fairly
> easy and straightforward way to register plugins globally (via a
> config file) in unittest2 so as long as these instructions exist in a
> migration doc then porting plugins over should be fine.  Well, the
> discovery of said plugins at least.
>
> On a side note, I do prefer something more "zero config" similar to
> how entry points worked.  Nice write-up on it from Tarek:
> http://tarekziade.wordpress.com/2010/07/25/plugins-system-thoughts-for-an-entry-points-replacement/
>
>    

That would be possible through Tarek's PEP 376 work. I still don't like 
the idea of a plugin automatically being active just because you 
installed some package that includes a unittest(2) / nose2 plugin. A 
plugins command of some form would allow plugins to be activated without 
the user having to mess with config files though.

>> 3) Is it worthwhile trying to patch in nose's importer? nose's
>> importer allows tests to be organized in directories instead of
>> packages, even when the module names overlap. Is that a real-world use
>> case that we need to continue supporting?
>>      
> Again, I think it might make the most sense if alternate test
> discovery / loading processes were done in plugins.
>
>    
Not currently possible with the discovery entry points for plugins. I'm 
open to suggestions as to how that can be fixed.


>> The meta question in all of this is how much work we want to do to
>> make test suites that work with nose now, work with nose2 without
>> major changes. Is that a main priority, or is nose2 a clean break with
>> no implied promise of compatibility?
>>      
> There are a lot of people using Nose for very big test suites [1].
> I'd guess a good amount of those suites will want to port to nose2 at
> some point.  If the migration steps are minor then that's probably
> sufficient otherwise the more features that are ported over the
> better.  I think if people want a clean break then they can probably
> just switch to unittest2, right?
>
>
>    
The idea of nose2 is that it will still contain useful features not 
implemented in unittest(2) - so people migrating from nose are not the 
*only* target audience. nose2 will definitely be interesting in its own 
right.

> [1] I guess maybe this is some indication of adoption?
> http://www.activestate.com/blog/2010/07/survey-says-selenium-nose-most-popular-test-framework
> (no idea how many people answered that survey).  Or that the latest
> Nose has 5,000+ downloads.
>
>    

Nice link - thanks. Wish they showed unittest2 separately though. :-)

Michael

>> Your thoughts?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> JP
>>
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>>      
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