[TIP] failing tests after upgrading Mock 0.7 to 0.8

[Julian Berman]

While I certainly agree with Martin (that in Python I would not expect this to
appear in a changelog, and subclasses should always be upcalling) a quick
bisect shows that the change that did this was revision 772:

http://code.google.com/p/mock/source/diff?spec=svna0f74bb6496ae81a7a4ebcd23d1f7475269c6d63&name=a0f74bb6496a&r=a0f74bb6496ae81a7a4ebcd23d1f7475269c6d63&format=side&path=/mock.py&old_path=/mock.py&old=ff757c620ad225011d3d91e2da3a7bcc7b4c9422

where mocks stopped relying on having __setattr__ being ignored during
initialization. I am guessing that at one point or another Michael Foord will
chime in anyhow but it seems like the reason for the change is just because
that isn't really documented behavior that was meant to be relied upon, as
above, and since things are a bit simpler this way, sooner or later it was just
made, and your thing broke.

So yeah, I'd personally recommend that you just tell everyone to call super,
since this is usually the thing that's expected to be happening when
subclassing. Here especially, the things __init__ is setting up are enabling
mock to distinguish things like non-mock attributes etc. which is definitely
needed.

Cheers,
Julian


On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 09:08:06AM +1100, Martin Pool wrote:
> On 21 November 2012 09:03, Martin Pool <mbp at sourcefrog.net> wrote:
> 
>     On 21 November 2012 08:47, Michael <mock at webhippo.net> wrote:
> 
>         I would like to respectfully answer this:
>          
> 
>     It doesn't look like you succeeded in answering respectfully.
>      
> 
>          
> 
>         This is a super un-useful answer.
> 
>         1. Yes it worked in 0.7.2
>         2. No the docs did not mention the __init__/super was call was
>         required. For all we knew it was not required.
>         3. The docs also do not mention like all kinds of things, like that one
>         should step on one foot while using mock ... that does not mean we
>         should do them.
> 
> 
> That's true; nor does it mention you must have Python installed, or your
> computer must be switched on.  I don't think it would be useful for every
> Python library's documentation to repeat the basics of how to use Python.
> 
> I don't think super constructor calls are an especially well designed aspect of
> Python, because the default behavior is generally not what you want (not to
> mention multiple inheritance.)  But, it is what it is, and code that doesn't
> call upwards is generally wrong already.
> 
> I expect if you sent a patch to Mock that does mention this they'd probably
> take it.
> 
> --
> Martin
> 

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