When I run make test on 3.3 now, I get failures because the tests try to make HTTP requests.

Are the failures because the machine you're running the test on doesn't
have internet access? Or are there problems with some of the tests?

The attached patch should solve the problem.

Yes, the machine did not have Internet access.  Before the run_tests.py patch, the urlfetch resource was not enabled by default.

I don’t want to disconnect to test the patch, but it looks good:
/home/wok/python/3.3/python -W default -bb -E -m test -r -w -j 0 -u all,-largefile,-urlfetch,-audio,-gui

Thanks!

> Before the run_tests.py patch, the urlfetch resource was not enabled
> by default.

I’m referring to the addition of run_tests.py, not this patch.

New changeset 228fd2bd83a5 by Nadeem Vawda in branch 'default':
Issue #12804: Prevent "make test" from using network resources.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/228fd2bd83a5

Please consider reverting this patch. If you have flaky network connection, you can override the test flags yourself.

New changeset 7fabd75a6ae4 by Antoine Pitrou in branch 'default':
Backout of changeset 228fd2bd83a5 by Nadeem Vawda in branch 'default':
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/7fabd75a6ae4

Change reverted. "make test" should run a comprehensive test of Python's facilities, and that includes network facilities. We only exclude functionality where testing is hostile to the user (largefile,audio,gui).

You could add "make offlinetest" if you care, though.

I don’t have a flaky connection, I have none at all; until this change I could always run just use “make test” for all Python versions.  OTOH, I agree with your point that testing networking facilities in the standard test suite makes sense, as most people probably have network access.  If it is easy to detect network availability programmatically, we could just use the skip system.

> Change reverted. "make test" should run a comprehensive test of
> Python's facilities

Fair enough.

> If it is easy to detect network availability programmatically, we could
> just use the skip system.

+1. I don't know if there is a reasonable way to do this, but if so, that
would be the best solution.

> > If it is easy to detect network availability programmatically, we could
> > just use the skip system.
> 
> +1. I don't know if there is a reasonable way to do this, but if so, that
> would be the best solution.

Actually, the skip system is already supposed to work for that if used
properly (see test.support.transient_internet()). However, perhaps it
actually doesn't work in all situations.

Oh, neat. I'll take a look at that when I get a chance.

FWIW there's also support.open_urlresource that can be used to download test data.  open_urlresouce calls requires('urlfetch') and skips the test when the resource is not enabled.  For instance, test_normalization uses it:
try:
    testdata = support.open_urlresource(TESTDATAURL, encoding="utf-8",
                                        check=check_version)
except (IOError, HTTPException):
    self.skipTest("Could not retrieve " + TESTDATAURL)
self.addCleanup(testdata.close)

This also saves the file on the disk and reuses it when the test is run again, so the connection is actually used once and only if available.

> Actually, the skip system is already supposed to work for that if used
> properly (see test.support.transient_internet()). However, perhaps it
> actually doesn't work in all situations.

It’s better than that: nearly all tests requiring network access use skips, it’s only a few modules like test_urllib*net that fails instead of skipping (certainly because it relied on the urlfetch resource being disabled by default).

New changeset 585d3664da89 by Nadeem Vawda in branch 'default':
Issue #12804: Fix test failures on systems without internet access.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/585d3664da89

Thanks!