[TIP] Coverage does not cover script if py.test executes it from another directory

Christoph Buchner bilderbuchi at phononoia.at
Mon Sep 2 08:45:15 PDT 2013


Hi folks,

I have run into an issue using py.test, pytest-cov and coverage. The
question is also on Stackoverflow in all detail
(http://stackoverflow.com/q/18573542/599884), but I'll also
summarize it here:

I'm writing a python script which takes command line arguments, working with
some files (git repos etc). 
I've written succeeding tests with py.test putting this script through its
paces (verifying it works correctly with different arguments, etc),
executing it with subprocess.call in the tests.

Now I want to analyze code coverage with coverage.py. 
Coverage, when used via the pytest-cov plugin (which has subprocess-handling
already built-in/ootb), does not see/cover my script when the script is
called from a temporary testing directory created with py.test's tmpdir
fixture. 
Coverage does see my script when it's called in the directory it resides in
(and the filename argument points to a remote path).

To illustrate with a minimal example,
> Running in directory /home/cbuchner/pytest_experiment
> Command: ./my_script.py /tmp/pytest-52/test_10/arg_file.txt
gets correct coverage measurement, but
> Running in directory /tmp/pytest-52/test_11
> Command: /home/cbuchner/pytest_experiment/my_script.py arg_file.txt
gives "Coverage.py warning: No data was collected."
See http://stackoverflow.com/q/18573542/599884 for full
console output and link to the used code.

In both situations, my tests pass! This is on Ubuntu, with Coverage 3.6,
pytest-2.3.5, pytest-cov 1.6, all from PyPi.

Questions: 
* How can I get coverage to recognize my script even if it's executed in
another directory? 
* Is this a bug in coverage, or something which is just not possible to do?
Would be surprised if the latter, after all, tmpdir is a stock mechanism of
py.test, right?
* If the way I did it is an inappropriate testing implementation, I'd be
grateful for pointers how to "properly" coverage-test file-manipulating
console utilities written in Python. Writing automated tests is pretty new
to me, so I'm learning much and know little (yet).

thanks for any pointers on this, 
best,
Christoph

P.S.: My first email got bounced, it says nowhere on the list info page that you have to be subscribed to be allowed to write to the list. 
It would be good imho to point this out, not all mailing lists have this requirement in place.



More information about the testing-in-python mailing list