According to unittest docs: https://docs.python.org/3.7/library/unittest.html#module-unittest

`setUpClass is called with the class as the only argument and must be decorated as a classmethod()`

and:

`tearDownClass is called with the class as the only argument and must be decorated as a classmethod()`

However, I was able to create a passing test case where `setUpClass` and `tearDownClass` are decorated with `@staticmethod` instead of `@classmethod`:

I tested this with Python versions 3.6.4 and 3.7.1.

Please update the documentation to indicate that `@staticmethod` is allowed here, or else indicate why it's bad.

The use case of setUpClass and tearDownClass is to run once during class setup and teardown where a class variable might be mutated. It's not a strict requirement [0] but rather maybe a common use case. There is at least one test case where setUpClass is used with @staticmethod at [1]

[0] https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/5909ad1217aad200c69ffa794fcab285bacb609e/Lib/unittest/suite.py#L159
[1] https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/5909ad1217aad200c69ffa794fcab285bacb609e/Lib/test/test_dbm_gnu.py#L12

It's more of a "can't be an instance method" than a strict "only classmethod".

Can I ask why you want it to be a strictmethod instead of a classmethod? I personally don't want to change the docs as I think that encourages a potentially bad situation where someone meant to have a classmethod and didn't realize the difference between that and staticmethod. But if there's a legitimate need for staticmethod then I'm open to reconsidering how the docs are written.