[BioPython] question regarding testing suites

[Andrew Dalke]

Hi Ann! (And other BioPython folk)

On Jun 9, 2007, at 4:16 PM, Ann Loraine wrote:
> would you recommend I use [unittest], or do you think there are
> some other frameworks I should investigate, as well?

Use "nose" from http://somethingaboutorange.com/mrl/projects/nose/
which lets you develop tests using unittest *and* other ways.


There are two aspects you should be aware of: unit tests
and and unit test discovery.  You gotta write the tests and
you gotta run the tests.

unittest.py does both.  Derive from TestCase, write methods
starting with "test_" and the unittest.main() can auto-discover
everything.

The downsides are "unittest"'s discovery doesn't support:
   - simple functions (when it's silly to make a class for
       two lines of code)
   - doctests
   - running all/a subset of your unittests across multiple files.


The nose system also has support for things like
checking execution time and doing coverage tests.



				Andrew
				dalke at dalkescientific.com