Testing guidelines

Writing unit tests

Some general hints:

• Tests should run with just Python Standard Library modules installed (i.e. if there are additional requirements, the test should be skipped if those are missing)

• Tests should run even if there is no network connectivity (please mock urllib calls, for example)

• Tests should be stable and not require modifications every time the tested code’s implementation changes slightly (been there / done that)

Right now, bumblebee-status uses the pytest framework, and its unit tests are located inside the tests/ subdirectory.

First implication: To run the new tests, you need to have pytest installed, it is not part of the Python Standard Library. Most distributions call the package python-pytest or python3-pytest or something similar (or you just use pip install --use pytest)

Aside from that, you just write your tests using pytest as usual, with one big caveat:

If you create a new directory inside tests/, you need to also create a file called __init__.py inside that, otherwise, modules won’t load correctly.

For examples, just browse the existing code. A good, minimal sample for unit testing bumblebee-status is tests/core/test_event.py.