[TIP] The role of nose2 in relation to unittest2

[Michael Foord]

  On 26/09/2010 19:43, Arve Knudsen wrote:
> Hi
>
> As I've been tinkering with nose2 and unittest2, and got to know the 
> two better, the question has emerged as to exactly which role nose2 is 
> meant to fulfill on top of unittest2.
>
> With the original unittest, nose's raison de vivre is pretty clear; 
> seeing as unittest is rather an archaic/inflexible framework, there is 
> an obvious need of a more modern, practical alternative. nose offers 
> such an improved alternative. unittest2 on the other hand changes the 
> game, as it is being designed with today's needs in mind, and is 
> plugin-based (like nose). That unittest2 is a sound design is 
> evidenced by the fact that nose2 implements its functionality as 
> unittest2 plugins.
>

Hello Arve,

Well, presuming to speak for Jason here (partly)... My understanding, as 
author of the unittest2 plugins code, is as follows.

The purpose of the plugins machinery being developed for unittest2 is to 
*allow* useful popular and frequently requested functionality for 
unittest (such as that provided by nose) to be provided in clean and 
simple ways. The plugins branch itself is not *intended* to replace nose 
- merely make it dramatically simpler to implement and maintain. That at 
least is the goal.

The situation is confused by the fact that in order to ensure the 
plugins branch meets its goal I have implemented various 'example' 
plugins that have some overlap with the nose functionality. *However*, 
these plugins only cover a relatively small subset of the nose 
functionality.

The purpose of nose2 is to provide the functionality of nose using 
unittest2 plugins. This includes goals like, wherever possible, 
backwards compatibility with existing nose tests. (But not existing nose 
plugins as the mechanisms are too different.)



> Given that the meat of nose2 (excepting the runner) is already 
> unittest2 plugins, how does one define nose2's role? Why is there even 
> a nose2 runner, can't one simply develop plugins to integrate with the 
> unittest2 runner? More to the point, when now wanting to extend 
> unittest2, why write plugins for nose2 rather than unittest2 itself?

This is an interesting question. In a way nose2 becomes a set of 
unittest2 plugins, including replacing and extending some of the 
'default' plugins for unittest2. It is possible that some of the 
existing unittest2 example plugins may move into separate projects or 
into nose2.

It could also easily become the case that nose2 provides useful 
libraries and functionality for writing unittest2 plugins. The nose2 
runner exists to load the nose2 configuration and configure the nose2 
plugins. (Otherwise the user would have to have the nose2 configuration 
in *their* config file as well as any additional plugins they wanted to 
configure.)

At the *moment* the main reason to be interested in working on nose2 is 
because it is the future of nose - for both Python 2 and Python 3. If 
you are interested in the future of nose, or being able to write nose 
style tests with unittest for Python 3, then contributing to nose2 is an 
effective way of making that happen. Meanwhile the role of nose2 will 
grow and become clearer.

All the best,

Michael Foord

>
> Hope these questions make sense :)
>
> Arve
>
>
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