@ashwek @poyea Thanks for the quick thumbs up, we have started planning!

We would like to present an alternative to unittest: pytest (link) is (in our humble opinions) a much better testing framework, in which tests are a lot easier to write (but it comes with higher barrier for entry for contributors, see below). For example, here is a trivial unittest test class:

import unittest

class TrivialTests(unittest.TestCase):
    def test_inequality(self):
        a = 2
        b = a + 1
        self.assertNotEqual(a, b) # note the use of a bulky method

and here is the equivalent with pytest:

def test_inequality():
    a = 2
    b = a + 1
    assert a != b # note the use of a plain assert

Compared to unittest, however, there are two major downsides for contributors looking to develop code here:

pytest is an external dependency that must be installed.
pytest cannot find the production code unless the project (this one) is installed properly.
- This could be a problem for inexperienced contributors

Our view is that you may get inexperienced contributors who don't really know how to install Python packages. Even though it's not hard, and we would of course provide documentation for how to set up a development environment, this might be a barrier for entry that you guys don't want.

Using just unittest, we can have a separate test suite (i.e. in a separate top-level directory called tests) that can find the production code without a need for installing anything. It sets the absolute lowest barrier for entry to contribute to the project. We think this outweighs the benefit of using a more modern framework like pytest, but we wanted to present the option of using a more modern tool as maybe our view of the project's target audience is not correct.

Unless we hear back from you telling us otherwise, we'll proceed with unittest as the framework.

Sunbelt Computer Software

PL/B Language Development and Support

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Adopt a more robust testing system #309

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