Actually, ./python -m unittest test.test_email doesn't work either and those are two cases where the Lib/test module just forwards to the package's own test suite, so maybe that's the problem.

I am just responding so this will not show up on the 'unanswered issues' list.

I'd still like to see this fixed. Some of the features of regrtest will need to be implemented as plugins for unittest (but not many - a lot of the features of regrtest are already obsolete).

New changeset 217fdeeaf6e0 by R David Murray in branch 'default':
#8315: add automatic unittest test discovery in test.test_email
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/217fdeeaf6e0

I fixed this for test_email by adding automatic unit test discovery to test_email.__init__.

I believe it should be possible for a similar thing to do be done for test_importlib.

test_importlib has been fixed in issue 22002.

    $ ./python -m unittest test.test_importlib

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Ran 963 tests in 1.533s

    OK (skipped=15, expected failures=1)