Unit Testing Entire Project Hierarchy In Python Using Unittest In Pydev

I am using unittest module to unit test some python code that has been created in a hierarchical struture of packages using Pydev. The problem arises as I try to use separate sourc

Solution 1:

This is not supported by default in Python itself (i.e.: nothing to do with PyDev) -- I also come from a Java background, so, you may need to forget some of your Java concepts here :)

In Python, whenever a folder with __init__.py is found, that package will no longer be searched in other paths. I think setuptools has some hackery to make that work and I remember vaguely that Python 3 may add some support for it, but so far I don't think it's generally recommended... This differs quite a bit from the Java approach -- in Python, flat is better than nested -- maybe you know, but otherwise, just for fun, start a Python interpreter session and do 'import this' :)

I.e.: In short, once my_app/__init__.py is found, it won't try to resolve my_app subfolders in any other place in the PYTHONPATH

So, you have 2 approaches... Usually what I do is having the tests close to the module in a _tests package. I.e.:

/project
/project/src
/project/src/myapp
/project/src/myapp/__init__.py
/project/src/myapp/_tests
/project/src/myapp/_tests/__init__.py
/project/src/myapp/_tests/test_myapp.py

And the other approach (which I must say I like a little bit less as the tests 'feel' more separate from the code), would be having a separate package for tests:

/project
/project/src
/project/src/myapp
/project/src/myapp/__init__.py
/project/src/myapp_tests/__init__.py
/project/src/myapp_tests/test_myapp.py