> Have a look at
http://code.google.com/p/google-highly-open-participation-psf/issues/detail?id=290
> where a GHOP student did a conversion as well.

Interesting, didn't know about that.
In future I'll check that site before start working on a new patch
involving the test suite since it seems those students are already
working on these kind of issues.

> Any chance to come up with a possible merged version 
> that takes the best from your work, Giampaolo and the
> student's work?

Don't know... the suite is extremely simple and, IMO, I don't even think
there's a real need to do that.
I noticed that the student added/changed some stuff like the new
"test_modes" method which maybe could be useful to have.