Original mail:
JML's testtools has a TestResult subclass with a done() method. The
reason for this method is to allow doing things after the last test has
run. While a result can infer 'first test' it can't infer 'last test'
without ugliness like __del__.

Some uses for this are:

• reporting summary data
• closing external resources like log files, sockets to remote machines
  etc
• <your idea here>

This can be added quite safely I think - check for the attribute, and if
present call it.

done() could be spelt differently - I don't think anyone would care.
testsFinished()
finished()
etc.

Now, some refinements, as usual (for me at least) when considering a
feature like this from an upstream perspective, where one's immediate
use cases are just special cases not general case, I've come up with
some refinements.

Firstly, I said you can infer starting. But its asymmetrical to have a
'run is finished' method that unittest will call, and not a 'run is
about to start' method too. So I think we should have two methods,
paired. This will avoid people having to write inference code themselves
every time.

Secondly, TestCase.run(None) creates a result. I think it would be good
to make a clear statement about who, and when should and will call these
two new methods. Something like:

"Whomever calls 'start' is responsible for calling 'done'." Concretely
this means that when TestCase implicitly creates a TestResult, it will
call start, and also call done.

Thirdly, naming. I'm agnostic, but I'd lean towards something clear, and
something that can't be easily confused with startTest/stopTest. e.g.
'startTestRun' and 'stopTestRun' (just pluralising 'Test' to 'Tests'
would be easily confusable).

If this all makes sense, I'll write up some tests and put a patch
together. I'm pasting this into the issue to, for folk that watch issues
only :).

startTestRun and stopTestRun sound good to me.

Quite useful! Names are hard, but the ones proposed are pretty good.

I've written up a patch for this; it works with old result classes too.

Hopefully the bugtracker will attach it in reply to this mail; if not
I'll put in via the webui this evening.

-Rob

The patch looks fine to me, except that it's missing documentation
updates. The feature and names are fine too.

On Wed, 2009-04-15 at 23:19 +0000, Barry A. Warsaw wrote:

Barry A. Warsaw <barry@python.org> added the comment:

The patch looks fine to me, except that it's missing documentation
updates. The feature and names are fine too.

Where do the docs go?

-Rob

On Apr 15, 2009, at 7:43 PM, Robert Collins wrote:

Robert Collins <robertc@robertcollins.net> added the comment:

On Wed, 2009-04-15 at 23:19 +0000, Barry A. Warsaw wrote:
> Barry A. Warsaw <barry@python.org> added the comment:
>
> The patch looks fine to me, except that it's missing documentation
> updates. The feature and names are fine too.

Where do the docs go?

Doc/library/unittest.rst

Updates - docs, and fixes a couple of stubbed out upcalls in the logging
result put in while bootsrapping.

Committed in revision 72225.