path: root/lib/testtools/NEWS

testtools NEWS
++++++++++++++

Changes and improvements to testtools_, grouped by release.

NEXT
~~~~

Changes
-------

* Failed equality assertions now line up. (Jonathan Lange, #879339)


0.9.12
~~~~~~

This is a very big release.  We've made huge improvements on three fronts:
 1. Test failures are way nicer and easier to read
 2. Matchers and ``assertThat`` are much more convenient to use
 3. Correct handling of extended unicode characters

We've trimmed off the fat from the stack trace you get when tests fail, we've
cut out the bits of error messages that just didn't help, we've made it easier
to annotate mismatch failures, to compare complex objects and to match raised
exceptions.

Testing code was never this fun.

Changes
-------

* ``AfterPreproccessing`` renamed to ``AfterPreprocessing``, which is a more
  correct spelling.  Old name preserved for backwards compatibility, but is
  now deprecated.  Please stop using it.
  (Jonathan Lange, #813460)

* ``assertThat`` raises ``MismatchError`` instead of
  ``TestCase.failureException``.  ``MismatchError`` is a subclass of
  ``AssertionError``, so in most cases this change will not matter. However,
  if ``self.failureException`` has been set to a non-default value, then
  mismatches will become test errors rather than test failures.

* ``gather_details`` takes two dicts, rather than two detailed objects.
  (Jonathan Lange, #801027)

* ``MatchesRegex`` mismatch now says "<value> does not match /<regex>/" rather
  than "<regex> did not match <value>". The regular expression contains fewer
  backslashes too. (Jonathan Lange, #818079)

* Tests that run with ``AsynchronousDeferredRunTest`` now have the ``reactor``
  attribute set to the running reactor. (Jonathan Lange, #720749)

Improvements
------------

* All public matchers are now in ``testtools.matchers.__all__``.
  (Jonathan Lange, #784859)

* ``assertThat`` can actually display mismatches and matchers that contain
  extended unicode characters. (Jonathan Lange, Martin [gz], #804127)

* ``assertThat`` output is much less verbose, displaying only what the mismatch
  tells us to display. Old-style verbose output can be had by passing
  ``verbose=True`` to assertThat. (Jonathan Lange, #675323, #593190)

* ``assertThat`` accepts a message which will be used to annotate the matcher.
  This can be given as a third parameter or as a keyword parameter.
  (Robert Collins)

* Automated the Launchpad part of the release process.
  (Jonathan Lange, #623486)

* Correctly display non-ASCII unicode output on terminals that claim to have a
  unicode encoding. (Martin [gz], #804122)

* ``DocTestMatches`` correctly handles unicode output from examples, rather
  than raising an error. (Martin [gz], #764170)

* ``ErrorHolder`` and ``PlaceHolder`` added to docs. (Jonathan Lange, #816597)

* ``ExpectedException`` now matches any exception of the given type by
  default, and also allows specifying a ``Matcher`` rather than a mere regular
  expression. (Jonathan Lange, #791889)

* ``FixtureSuite`` added, allows test suites to run with a given fixture.
  (Jonathan Lange)

* Hide testtools's own stack frames when displaying tracebacks, making it
  easier for test authors to focus on their errors.
  (Jonathan Lange, Martin [gz], #788974)

* Less boilerplate displayed in test failures and errors.
  (Jonathan Lange, #660852)

* ``MatchesException`` now allows you to match exceptions against any matcher,
  rather than just regular expressions.  (Jonathan Lange, #791889)

* ``MatchesException`` now permits a tuple of types rather than a single type
  (when using the type matching mode).  (Robert Collins)

* ``MatchesStructure.byEquality`` added to make the common case of matching
  many attributes by equality much easier.  ``MatchesStructure.byMatcher``
  added in case folk want to match by things other than equality.
  (Jonathan Lange)

* New convenience assertions, ``assertIsNone`` and ``assertIsNotNone``.
  (Christian Kampka)

* New matchers:

  * ``AllMatch`` matches many values against a single matcher.
    (Jonathan Lange, #615108)

  * ``Contains``. (Robert Collins)

  * ``GreaterThan``. (Christian Kampka)

* New helper, ``safe_hasattr`` added. (Jonathan Lange)

* ``reraise`` added to ``testtools.compat``. (Jonathan Lange)


0.9.11
~~~~~~

This release brings consistent use of super for better compatibility with
multiple inheritance, fixed Python3 support, improvements in fixture and mather
outputs and a compat helper for testing libraries that deal with bytestrings.

Changes
-------

* ``TestCase`` now uses super to call base ``unittest.TestCase`` constructor,
  ``setUp`` and ``tearDown``. (Tim Cole, #771508)

* If, when calling ``useFixture`` an error occurs during fixture set up, we
  still attempt to gather details from the fixture. (Gavin Panella)


Improvements
------------

* Additional compat helper for ``BytesIO`` for libraries that build on
  testtools and are working on Python 3 porting. (Robert Collins)

* Corrected documentation for ``MatchesStructure`` in the test authors
  document.  (Jonathan Lange)

* ``LessThan`` error message now says something that is logically correct.
  (Gavin Panella, #762008)

* Multiple details from a single fixture are now kept separate, rather than
  being mooshed together. (Gavin Panella, #788182)

* Python 3 support now back in action. (Martin [gz], #688729)

* ``try_import`` and ``try_imports`` have a callback that is called whenever
  they fail to import a module.  (Martin Pool)


0.9.10
~~~~~~

The last release of testtools could not be easy_installed.  This is considered
severe enough for a re-release.

Improvements
------------

* Include ``doc/`` in the source distribution, making testtools installable
  from PyPI again (Tres Seaver, #757439)


0.9.9
~~~~~

Many, many new matchers, vastly expanded documentation, stacks of bug fixes,
better unittest2 integration.  If you've ever wanted to try out testtools but
been afraid to do so, this is the release to try.


Changes
-------

* The timestamps generated by ``TestResult`` objects when no timing data has
  been received are now datetime-with-timezone, which allows them to be
  sensibly serialised and transported. (Robert Collins, #692297)

Improvements
------------

* ``AnnotatedMismatch`` now correctly returns details.
  (Jonathan Lange, #724691)

* distutils integration for the testtools test runner. Can now use it for
  'python setup.py test'. (Christian Kampka, #693773)

* ``EndsWith`` and ``KeysEqual`` now in testtools.matchers.__all__.
  (Jonathan Lange, #692158)

* ``MatchesException`` extended to support a regular expression check against
  the str() of a raised exception.  (Jonathan Lange)

* ``MultiTestResult`` now forwards the ``time`` API. (Robert Collins, #692294)

* ``MultiTestResult`` now documented in the manual. (Jonathan Lange, #661116)

* New content helpers ``content_from_file``, ``content_from_stream`` and
  ``attach_file`` make it easier to attach file-like objects to a
  test. (Jonathan Lange, Robert Collins, #694126)

* New ``ExpectedException`` context manager to help write tests against things
  that are expected to raise exceptions. (Aaron Bentley)

* New matchers:

  * ``MatchesListwise`` matches an iterable of matchers against an iterable
    of values. (Michael Hudson-Doyle)

  * ``MatchesRegex`` matches a string against a regular expression.
    (Michael Hudson-Doyle)

  * ``MatchesStructure`` matches attributes of an object against given
    matchers.  (Michael Hudson-Doyle)

  * ``AfterPreproccessing`` matches values against a matcher after passing them
    through a callable.  (Michael Hudson-Doyle)

  * ``MatchesSetwise`` matches an iterable of matchers against an iterable of
    values, without regard to order.  (Michael Hudson-Doyle)

* ``setup.py`` can now build a snapshot when Bazaar is installed but the tree
  is not a Bazaar tree. (Jelmer Vernooij)

* Support for running tests using distutils (Christian Kampka, #726539)

* Vastly improved and extended documentation. (Jonathan Lange)

* Use unittest2 exception classes if available. (Jelmer Vernooij)


0.9.8
~~~~~

In this release we bring some very interesting improvements:

* new matchers for exceptions, sets, lists, dicts and more.

* experimental (works but the contract isn't supported) twisted reactor
  support.

* The built in runner can now list tests and filter tests (the -l and
  --load-list options).

Changes
-------

* addUnexpectedSuccess is translated to addFailure for test results that don't
  know about addUnexpectedSuccess.  Further, it fails the entire result for
  all testtools TestResults (i.e. wasSuccessful() returns False after
  addUnexpectedSuccess has been called). Note that when using a delegating
  result such as ThreadsafeForwardingResult, MultiTestResult or
  ExtendedToOriginalDecorator then the behaviour of addUnexpectedSuccess is
  determined by the delegated to result(s).
  (Jonathan Lange, Robert Collins, #654474, #683332)

* startTestRun will reset any errors on the result.  That is, wasSuccessful()
  will always return True immediately after startTestRun() is called. This
  only applies to delegated test results (ThreadsafeForwardingResult,
  MultiTestResult and ExtendedToOriginalDecorator) if the delegated to result
  is a testtools test result - we cannot reliably reset the state of unknown
  test result class instances. (Jonathan Lange, Robert Collins, #683332)

* Responsibility for running test cleanups has been moved to ``RunTest``.
  This change does not affect public APIs and can be safely ignored by test
  authors.  (Jonathan Lange, #662647)

Improvements
------------

* New matchers:

  * ``EndsWith`` which complements the existing ``StartsWith`` matcher.
    (Jonathan Lange, #669165)

  * ``MatchesException`` matches an exception class and parameters. (Robert
    Collins)

  * ``KeysEqual`` matches a dictionary with particular keys.  (Jonathan Lange)

* ``assertIsInstance`` supports a custom error message to be supplied, which
  is necessary when using ``assertDictEqual`` on Python 2.7 with a
  ``testtools.TestCase`` base class. (Jelmer Vernooij)

* Experimental support for running tests that return Deferreds.
  (Jonathan Lange, Martin [gz])

* Provide a per-test decorator, run_test_with, to specify which RunTest
  object to use for a given test.  (Jonathan Lange, #657780)

* Fix the runTest parameter of TestCase to actually work, rather than raising
  a TypeError.  (Jonathan Lange, #657760)

* Non-release snapshots of testtools will now work with buildout.
  (Jonathan Lange, #613734)

* Malformed SyntaxErrors no longer blow up the test suite.  (Martin [gz])

* ``MismatchesAll.describe`` no longer appends a trailing newline.
  (Michael Hudson-Doyle, #686790)

* New helpers for conditionally importing modules, ``try_import`` and
  ``try_imports``.  (Jonathan Lange)

* ``Raises`` added to the ``testtools.matchers`` module - matches if the
  supplied callable raises, and delegates to an optional matcher for validation
  of the exception. (Robert Collins)

* ``raises`` added to the ``testtools.matchers`` module - matches if the
  supplied callable raises and delegates to ``MatchesException`` to validate
  the exception. (Jonathan Lange)

* Tests will now pass on Python 2.6.4 : an ``Exception`` change made only in
  2.6.4 and reverted in Python 2.6.5 was causing test failures on that version.
  (Martin [gz], #689858).

* ``testtools.TestCase.useFixture`` has been added to glue with fixtures nicely.
  (Robert Collins)

* ``testtools.run`` now supports ``-l`` to list tests rather than executing
  them. This is useful for integration with external test analysis/processing
  tools like subunit and testrepository. (Robert Collins)

* ``testtools.run`` now supports ``--load-list``, which takes a file containing
  test ids, one per line, and intersects those ids with the tests found. This
  allows fine grained control of what tests are run even when the tests cannot
  be named as objects to import (e.g. due to test parameterisation via
  testscenarios). (Robert Collins)

* Update documentation to say how to use testtools.run() on Python 2.4.
  (Jonathan Lange, #501174)

* ``text_content`` conveniently converts a Python string to a Content object.
  (Jonathan Lange, James Westby)



0.9.7
~~~~~

Lots of little cleanups in this release; many small improvements to make your
testing life more pleasant.

Improvements
------------

* Cleanups can raise ``testtools.MultipleExceptions`` if they have multiple
  exceptions to report. For instance, a cleanup which is itself responsible for
  running several different internal cleanup routines might use this.

* Code duplication between assertEqual and the matcher Equals has been removed.

* In normal circumstances, a TestCase will no longer share details with clones
  of itself. (Andrew Bennetts, bug #637725)

* Less exception object cycles are generated (reduces peak memory use between
  garbage collection). (Martin [gz])

* New matchers 'DoesNotStartWith' and 'StartsWith' contributed by Canonical
  from the Launchpad project. Written by James Westby.

* Timestamps as produced by subunit protocol clients are now forwarded in the
  ThreadsafeForwardingResult so correct test durations can be reported.
  (Martin [gz], Robert Collins, #625594)

* With unittest from Python 2.7 skipped tests will now show only the reason
  rather than a serialisation of all details. (Martin [gz], #625583)

* The testtools release process is now a little better documented and a little
  smoother.  (Jonathan Lange, #623483, #623487)


0.9.6
~~~~~

Nothing major in this release, just enough small bits and pieces to make it
useful enough to upgrade to.

In particular, a serious bug in assertThat() has been fixed, it's easier to
write Matchers, there's a TestCase.patch() method for those inevitable monkey
patches and TestCase.assertEqual gives slightly nicer errors.

Improvements
------------

* 'TestCase.assertEqual' now formats errors a little more nicely, in the
  style of bzrlib.

* Added `PlaceHolder` and `ErrorHolder`, TestCase-like objects that can be
  used to add results to a `TestResult`.

* 'Mismatch' now takes optional description and details parameters, so
  custom Matchers aren't compelled to make their own subclass.

* jml added a built-in UTF8_TEXT ContentType to make it slightly easier to
  add details to test results. See bug #520044.

* Fix a bug in our built-in matchers where assertThat would blow up if any
  of them failed. All built-in mismatch objects now provide get_details().

* New 'Is' matcher, which lets you assert that a thing is identical to
  another thing.

* New 'LessThan' matcher which lets you assert that a thing is less than
  another thing.

* TestCase now has a 'patch()' method to make it easier to monkey-patching
  objects in tests. See the manual for more information. Fixes bug #310770.

* MultiTestResult methods now pass back return values from the results it
  forwards to.

0.9.5
~~~~~

This release fixes some obscure traceback formatting issues that probably
weren't affecting you but were certainly breaking our own test suite.

Changes
-------

* Jamu Kakar has updated classes in testtools.matchers and testtools.runtest
  to be new-style classes, fixing bug #611273.

Improvements
------------

* Martin[gz] fixed traceback handling to handle cases where extract_tb returns
  a source line of None. Fixes bug #611307.

* Martin[gz] fixed an unicode issue that was causing the tests to fail,
  closing bug #604187.

* testtools now handles string exceptions (although why would you want to use
  them?) and formats their tracebacks correctly. Thanks to Martin[gz] for
  fixing bug #592262.

0.9.4
~~~~~

This release overhauls the traceback formatting layer to deal with Python 2
line numbers and traceback objects often being local user encoded strings
rather than unicode objects. Test discovery has also been added and Python 3.1
is also supported. Finally, the Mismatch protocol has been extended to let
Matchers collaborate with tests in supplying detailed data about failures.

Changes
-------

* testtools.utils has been renamed to testtools.compat. Importing
  testtools.utils will now generate a deprecation warning.

Improvements
------------

* Add machinery for Python 2 to create unicode tracebacks like those used by
  Python 3. This means testtools no longer throws on encountering non-ascii
  filenames, source lines, or exception strings when displaying test results.
  Largely contributed by Martin[gz] with some tweaks from Robert Collins.

* James Westby has supplied test discovery support using the Python 2.7
  TestRunner in testtools.run. This requires the 'discover' module. This
  closes bug #250764.

* Python 3.1 is now supported, thanks to Martin[gz] for a partial patch.
  This fixes bug #592375.

* TestCase.addCleanup has had its docstring corrected about when cleanups run.

* TestCase.skip is now deprecated in favour of TestCase.skipTest, which is the
  Python2.7 spelling for skip. This closes bug #560436.

* Tests work on IronPython patch from Martin[gz] applied.

* Thanks to a patch from James Westby testtools.matchers.Mismatch can now
  supply a get_details method, which assertThat will query to provide
  additional attachments. This can be used to provide additional detail
  about the mismatch that doesn't suite being included in describe(). For
  instance, if the match process was complex, a log of the process could be
  included, permitting debugging.

* testtools.testresults.real._StringException will now answer __str__ if its
  value is unicode by encoding with UTF8, and vice versa to answer __unicode__.
  This permits subunit decoded exceptions to contain unicode and still format
  correctly.

0.9.3
~~~~~

More matchers, Python 2.4 support, faster test cloning by switching to copy
rather than deepcopy and better output when exceptions occur in cleanups are
the defining characteristics of this release.

Improvements
------------

* New matcher "Annotate" that adds a simple string message to another matcher,
  much like the option 'message' parameter to standard library assertFoo
  methods.

* New matchers "Not" and "MatchesAll". "Not" will invert another matcher, and
  "MatchesAll" that needs a successful match for all of its arguments.

* On Python 2.4, where types.FunctionType cannot be deepcopied, testtools will
  now monkeypatch copy._deepcopy_dispatch using the same trivial patch that
  added such support to Python 2.5. The monkey patch is triggered by the
  absence of FunctionType from the dispatch dict rather than a version check.
  Bug #498030.

* On windows the test 'test_now_datetime_now' should now work reliably.

* TestCase.getUniqueInteger and TestCase.getUniqueString now have docstrings.

* TestCase.getUniqueString now takes an optional prefix parameter, so you can
  now use it in circumstances that forbid strings with '.'s, and such like.

* testtools.testcase.clone_test_with_new_id now uses copy.copy, rather than
  copy.deepcopy. Tests that need a deeper copy should use the copy protocol to
  control how they are copied. Bug #498869.

* The backtrace test result output tests should now pass on windows and other
  systems where os.sep is not '/'.

* When a cleanUp or tearDown exception occurs, it is now accumulated as a new
  traceback in the test details, rather than as a separate call to addError / 
  addException. This makes testtools work better with most TestResult objects
  and fixes bug #335816.


0.9.2
~~~~~

Python 3 support, more matchers and better consistency with Python 2.7 --
you'd think that would be enough for a point release. Well, we here on the
testtools project think that you deserve more.

We've added a hook so that user code can be called just-in-time whenever there
is an exception, and we've also factored out the "run" logic of test cases so
that new outcomes can be added without fiddling with the actual flow of logic.

It might sound like small potatoes, but it's changes like these that will
bring about the end of test frameworks.


Improvements
------------

* A failure in setUp and tearDown now report as failures not as errors.

* Cleanups now run after tearDown to be consistent with Python 2.7's cleanup
  feature.

* ExtendedToOriginalDecorator now passes unrecognised attributes through
  to the decorated result object, permitting other extensions to the
  TestCase -> TestResult protocol to work.

* It is now possible to trigger code just-in-time after an exception causes
  a test outcome such as failure or skip. See the testtools MANUAL or
  ``pydoc testtools.TestCase.addOnException``. (bug #469092)

* New matcher Equals which performs a simple equality test.

* New matcher MatchesAny which looks for a match of any of its arguments.

* TestCase no longer breaks if a TestSkipped exception is raised with no
  parameters.

* TestCase.run now clones test cases before they are run and runs the clone.
  This reduces memory footprint in large test runs - state accumulated on
  test objects during their setup and execution gets freed when test case
  has finished running unless the TestResult object keeps a reference.
  NOTE: As test cloning uses deepcopy, this can potentially interfere if
  a test suite has shared state (such as the testscenarios or testresources
  projects use).  Use the __deepcopy__ hook to control the copying of such
  objects so that the shared references stay shared.

* Testtools now accepts contributions without copyright assignment under some
  circumstances. See HACKING for details.

* Testtools now provides a convenient way to run a test suite using the
  testtools result object: python -m testtools.run testspec [testspec...].

* Testtools now works on Python 3, thanks to Benjamin Peterson.

* Test execution now uses a separate class, testtools.RunTest to run single
  tests. This can be customised and extended in a more consistent fashion than
  the previous run method idiom. See pydoc for more information.

* The test doubles that testtools itself uses are now available as part of
  the testtools API in testtols.testresult.doubles.

* TracebackContent now sets utf8 as the charset encoding, rather than not
  setting one and encoding with the default encoder.

* With python2.7 testtools.TestSkipped will be the unittest.case.SkipTest
  exception class making skips compatible with code that manually raises the
  standard library exception. (bug #490109)

Changes
-------

* TestCase.getUniqueInteger is now implemented using itertools.count. Thanks
  to Benjamin Peterson for the patch. (bug #490111)


0.9.1
~~~~~

The new matcher API introduced in 0.9.0 had a small flaw where the matchee
would be evaluated twice to get a description of the mismatch. This could lead
to bugs if the act of matching caused side effects to occur in the matchee.
Since having such side effects isn't desirable, we have changed the API now
before it has become widespread.

Changes
-------

* Matcher API changed to avoid evaluating matchee twice. Please consult
  the API documentation.

* TestCase.getUniqueString now uses the test id, not the test method name,
  which works nicer with parameterised tests.

Improvements
------------

* Python2.4 is now supported again.


0.9.0
~~~~~

This release of testtools is perhaps the most interesting and exciting one
it's ever had. We've continued in bringing together the best practices of unit
testing from across a raft of different Python projects, but we've also
extended our mission to incorporating unit testing concepts from other
languages and from our own research, led by Robert Collins.

We now support skipping and expected failures. We'll make sure that you
up-call setUp and tearDown, avoiding unexpected testing weirdnesses. We're
now compatible with Python 2.5, 2.6 and 2.7 unittest library.

All in all, if you are serious about unit testing and want to get the best
thinking from the whole Python community, you should get this release.

Improvements
------------

* A new TestResult API has been added for attaching details to test outcomes.
  This API is currently experimental, but is being prepared with the intent
  of becoming an upstream Python API. For more details see pydoc
  testtools.TestResult and the TestCase addDetail / getDetails methods.

* assertThat has been added to TestCase. This new assertion supports
  a hamcrest-inspired matching protocol. See pydoc testtools.Matcher for
  details about writing matchers, and testtools.matchers for the included
  matchers. See http://code.google.com/p/hamcrest/.

* Compatible with Python 2.6 and Python 2.7

* Failing to upcall in setUp or tearDown will now cause a test failure.
  While the base methods do nothing, failing to upcall is usually a problem
  in deeper hierarchies, and checking that the root method is called is a
  simple way to catch this common bug.

* New TestResult decorator ExtendedToOriginalDecorator which handles
  downgrading extended API calls like addSkip to older result objects that
  do not support them. This is used internally to make testtools simpler but
  can also be used to simplify other code built on or for use with testtools.

* New TextTestResult supporting the extended APIs that testtools provides.

* Nose will no longer find 'runTest' tests in classes derived from
   testtools.testcase.TestCase (bug #312257).

* Supports the Python 2.7/3.1 addUnexpectedSuccess and addExpectedFailure
  TestResult methods, with a support function 'knownFailure' to let tests
  trigger these outcomes.

* When using the skip feature with TestResult objects that do not support it
  a test success will now be reported. Previously an error was reported but
  production experience has shown that this is too disruptive for projects that
  are using skips: they cannot get a clean run on down-level result objects.


.. _testtools: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/testtools