Testing Guidelines¶
This section describes the testing framework and format standards for tests in Astropy core packages (this also serves as recommendations for affiliated packages).
Testing Framework¶
The testing framework used by astropy (and packages using the Astropy
package template) is the pytest framework,
accessed through the python setup.py test
command.
Note
The pytest
project was formerly called py.test
, and you may
see the two spellings used interchangeably in the documentation.
Testing Dependencies¶
As of Astropy 3.0, the dependencies used by the Astropy test runner are
provided by a separate package called pytest-astropy. This package provides
the pytest
dependency itself, in addition to several pytest
plugins
that are used by Astropy, and will also be of general use to other packages.
Since the testing dependencies are not actually required to install or use
Astropy, they are not included in install_requires
in setup.py
.
However, for technical reasons it is not currently possible to express these
dependencies in tests_require
either. Therefore, pytest-astropy
is
listed as an extra dependency using extras_require
in setup.py
.
Developers who want to run the test suite will need to install the testing
package using pip:
> pip install pytest-astropy
A detailed description of the plugins can be found in the Pytest Plugins section.
Running Tests¶
There are currently three different ways to invoke Astropy tests. Each method invokes pytest to run the tests but offers different options when calling. To run the tests, you will need to make sure you have the pytest package (version 3.1 or later) installed.
In addition to running the Astropy tests, these methods can also be called so that they check Python source code for PEP8 compliance. All of the PEP8 testing options require the pytest-pep8 plugin, which must be installed separately.
setup.py test¶
The astropy core package and the Astropy package template provide a test
setup command, invoked by running python setup.py test
while in the
package root directory. Run python setup.py test --help
to see the
options to the test command.
Since python setup.py test
wraps the widely-used pytest framework, you may
from time to time want to pass options to the pytest
command itself. For
example, the -x
option to stop after the first failure can be passed
through with the --args
argument:
> python setup.py test --args "-x"
pytest will look for files that look like tests in the current directory and all recursive directories then run all the code that looks like tests within those files.
Turn on PEP8 checking by passing --pep8
to the test
command. This will
turn off regular testing and enable PEP8 testing.
Note also that this test runner actually installs astropy into a temporary
directory and uses that for running the tests. This means that tests of things
like entry points or data file paths should act just like they would once
astropy is installed. The other two approaches described below do not do
this, and hence may give different results when run from the astropy source
code. Hence if you’re running the tests because you’ve modified code that might
be impacted by this, the setup.py test
approach is the recommended method.
astropy.test()¶
Tests can be run from within Astropy with:
import astropy
astropy.test()
This will run all the default tests for Astropy.
Tests for a specific package can be run by specifying the package in the call
to the test()
function:
astropy.test(package='io.fits')
This method works only with package names that can be mapped to Astropy
directories. As an alternative you can test a specific directory or file
with the test_path
option:
astropy.test(test_path='wcs/tests/test_wcs.py')
The test_path
must be specified either relative to the working directory
or absolutely.
By default astropy.test() will skip tests which retrieve data from the
internet. To turn these tests on use the remote_data
flag:
astropy.test(package='io.fits', remote_data=True)
In addition, the test
function supports any of the options that can be
passed to pytest.main(),
and convenience options verbose=
and pastebin=
.
Enable PEP8 compliance testing with pep8=True
in the call to
astropy.test
. This will enable PEP8 checking and disable regular tests.
Astropy Test Function¶
-
astropy.
test
(**kwargs)¶ Run the tests for the package.
This method builds arguments for and then calls
pytest.main
.- Parameters
- packagestr, optional
The name of a specific package to test, e.g. ‘io.fits’ or ‘utils’. Accepts comma separated string to specify multiple packages. If nothing is specified all default tests are run.
- argsstr, optional
Additional arguments to be passed to
pytest.main
in theargs
keyword argument.- docs_pathstr, optional
The path to the documentation .rst files.
- open_filesbool, optional
Fail when any tests leave files open. Off by default, because this adds extra run time to the test suite. Requires the
psutil
package.- parallelint or ‘auto’, optional
When provided, run the tests in parallel on the specified number of CPUs. If parallel is
'auto'
, it will use the all the cores on the machine. Requires thepytest-xdist
plugin.- pastebin(‘failed’, ‘all’, None), optional
Convenience option for turning on py.test pastebin output. Set to ‘failed’ to upload info for failed tests, or ‘all’ to upload info for all tests.
- pdbbool, optional
Turn on PDB post-mortem analysis for failing tests. Same as specifying
--pdb
inargs
.- pep8bool, optional
Turn on PEP8 checking via the pytest-pep8 plugin and disable normal tests. Same as specifying
--pep8 -k pep8
inargs
.- pluginslist, optional
Plugins to be passed to
pytest.main
in theplugins
keyword argument.- remote_data{‘none’, ‘astropy’, ‘any’}, optional
Controls whether to run tests marked with @pytest.mark.remote_data. This can be set to run no tests with remote data (
none
), only ones that use data from http://data.astropy.org (astropy
), or all tests that use remote data (any
). The default isnone
.- repeat
int
, optional If set, specifies how many times each test should be run. This is useful for diagnosing sporadic failures.
- skip_docs
bool
, optional When
True
, skips running the doctests in the .rst files.- test_pathstr, optional
Specify location to test by path. May be a single file or directory. Must be specified absolutely or relative to the calling directory.
- verbosebool, optional
Convenience option to turn on verbose output from py.test. Passing True is the same as specifying
-v
inargs
.
pytest¶
The test suite can be run directly from the native pytest
command. In this
case, it is important for developers to be aware that they must manually
rebuild any extensions by running setup.py build_ext
before testing.
In contrast to the case of running from setup.py
, the --doctest-plus
and --doctest-rst
options are not enabled by default when running the
pytest
command directly. This flags should be explicitly given if they are
needed.
Test-running options¶
Running parts of the test suite¶
It is possible to run only the tests for a particular subpackage or set of
subpackages. For example, to run only the wcs
tests from the
commandline:
python setup.py test -P wcs
Or, to run only the wcs
and utils
tests:
python setup.py test -P wcs,utils
Or from Python:
>>> import astropy
>>> astropy.test(package="wcs,utils")
You can also specify a single file to test from the commandline:
python setup.py test -t astropy/wcs/tests/test_wcs.py
When the -t
option is given a relative path, it is relative to the
installed root of astropy. When -t
is given a relative path to a
documentation .rst
file to test, it is relative to the root of the
documentation, i.e. the docs
directory in the source tree. For
example:
python setup.py test -t units/index.rst
Testing for open files¶
Astropy can test whether any of the unit tests inadvertently leave any files open. Since this greatly slows down the time it takes to run the tests, it is turned off by default.
To use it from the commandline, do:
python setup.py test --open-files
To use it from Python, do:
>>> import astropy
>>> astropy.test(open_files=True)
For more information on the pytest-openfiles
plugin see
pytest-openfiles
Test coverage reports¶
Astropy can use coverage.py to generate test coverage reports. To generate a test coverage report, use:
python setup.py test --coverage
There is a coveragerc file that
defines files to omit as well as lines to exclude. It is installed
along with astropy so that the astropy
testing framework can use
it. In the source tree, it is at astropy/tests/coveragerc
.
Running tests in parallel¶
It is possible to speed up astropy’s tests using the pytest-xdist plugin. This plugin can be installed using pip:
pip install pytest-xdist
Once installed, tests can be run in parallel using the '--parallel'
commandline option. For example, to use 4 processes:
python setup.py test --parallel=4
Pass --parallel=auto
to create the same number of processes as cores
on your machine.
Similarly, this feature can be invoked from Python:
>>> import astropy
>>> astropy.test(parallel=4)
Running tests to catch permissions errors¶
It is possible to write code or tests that write into the source directory. This is not desirable because Python packages can be (and frequently are) installed in locations where the user may not have write permissions. To check for these cases, the test runner has an option to have the test-runner directory be set as read-only to ensure the tests are not writing to that location. This mode can be triggered by running the tests like so:
python setup.py test --readonly
Writing tests¶
pytest
has the following test discovery rules:
test_*.py
or*_test.py
files
Test
prefixed classes (without an__init__
method)
test_
prefixed functions and methods
Consult the test discovery rules for detailed information on how to name files and tests so that they are automatically discovered by pytest.
Simple example¶
The following example shows a simple function and a test to test this function:
def func(x):
"""Add one to the argument."""
return x + 1
def test_answer():
"""Check the return value of func() for an example argument."""
assert func(3) == 5
If we place this in a test.py
file and then run:
pytest test.py
The result is:
============================= test session starts ==============================
python: platform darwin -- Python 3.6.0 -- pytest-3.2.0
test object 1: /Users/username/tmp/test.py
test.py F
=================================== FAILURES ===================================
_________________________________ test_answer __________________________________
def test_answer():
> assert func(3) == 5
E assert 4 == 5
E + where 4 = func(3)
test.py:5: AssertionError
=========================== 1 failed in 0.07 seconds ===========================
Where to put tests¶
Package-specific tests¶
Each package should include a suite of unit tests, covering as many of the public methods/functions as possible. These tests should be included inside each sub-package, e.g:
astropy/io/fits/tests/
tests
directories should contain an __init__.py
file so that
the tests can be imported and so that they can use relative imports.
Interoperability tests¶
Tests involving two or more sub-packages should be included in:
astropy/tests/
Regression tests¶
Any time a bug is fixed, and wherever possible, one or more regression tests should be added to ensure that the bug is not introduced in future. Regression tests should include the ticket URL where the bug was reported.
Working with data files¶
Tests that need to make use of a data file should use the
get_pkg_data_fileobj
or
get_pkg_data_filename
functions. These functions
search locally first, and then on the astropy data server or an arbitrary
URL, and return a file-like object or a local filename, respectively. They
automatically cache the data locally if remote data is obtained, and from
then on the local copy will be used transparently. See the next section for
note specific to dealing with the cache in tests.
They also support the use of an MD5 hash to get a specific version of a data
file. This hash can be obtained prior to submitting a file to the astropy
data server by using the compute_hash
function on a
local copy of the file.
Tests that may retrieve remote data should be marked with the
@pytest.mark.remote_data
decorator, or, if a doctest, flagged with the
REMOTE_DATA
flag. Tests marked in this way will be skipped by default by
astropy.test()
to prevent test runs from taking too long. These tests can
be run by astropy.test()
by adding the remote_data='any'
flag. Turn on
the remote data tests at the command line with python setup.py test
--remote-data=any
.
It is possible to mark tests using
@pytest.mark.remote_data(source='astropy')
, which can be used to indicate
that the only required data is from the http://data.astropy.org server. To
enable just these tests, you can run the
tests with python setup.py test --remote-data=astropy
.
For more information on the pytest-remotedata
plugin, see
pytest-remotedata.
Examples¶
from ...config import get_data_filename
def test_1():
"""Test version using a local file."""
#if filename.fits is a local file in the source distribution
datafile = get_data_filename('filename.fits')
# do the test
@pytest.mark.remote_data
def test_2():
"""Test version using a remote file."""
#this is the hash for a particular version of a file stored on the
#astropy data server.
datafile = get_data_filename('hash/94935ac31d585f68041c08f87d1a19d4')
# do the test
def doctest_example():
"""
>>> datafile = get_data_filename('hash/94935') # doctest: +REMOTE_DATA
"""
pass
The get_remote_test_data
will place the files in a temporary directory
indicated by the tempfile
module, so that the test files will eventually
get removed by the system. In the long term, once test data files become too
large, we will need to design a mechanism for removing test data immediately.
Tests that use the file cache¶
By default, the Astropy test runner sets up a clean file cache in a temporary
directory that is used only for that test run and then destroyed. This is to
ensure consistency between test runs, as well as to not clutter users’ caches
(i.e. the cache directory returned by get_cache_dir
) with
test files.
However, some test authors (especially for affiliated packages) may find it
desirable to cache files downloaded during a test run in a more permanent
location (e.g. for large data sets). To this end the
set_temp_cache
helper may be used. It can be used either as
a context manager within a test to temporarily set the cache to a custom
location, or as a decorator that takes effect for an entire test function
(not including setup or teardown, which would have to be decorated separately).
Furthermore, it is possible to set an option astropy_cache_dir
in the
pytest config file which sets the cache location for the entire test run. A
--astropy-cache-dir
command-line option is also supported (which overrides
all other settings). Currently it is not directly supported by the
./setup.py test
command, so it is necessary to use it with the -a
argument like:
$ ./setup.py test -a "--astropy-cache-dir=/path/to/custom/cache/dir"
Tests that create files¶
Tests may often be run from directories where users do not have write permissions so tests which create files should always do so in temporary directories. This can be done with the pytest tmpdir function argument or with Python’s built-in tempfile module.
Setting up/Tearing down tests¶
In some cases, it can be useful to run a series of tests requiring something to be set up first. There are four ways to do this:
Module-level setup/teardown¶
If the setup_module
and teardown_module
functions are specified in a
file, they are called before and after all the tests in the file respectively.
These functions take one argument, which is the module itself, which makes it
very easy to set module-wide variables:
def setup_module(module):
"""Initialize the value of NUM."""
module.NUM = 11
def add_num(x):
"""Add pre-defined NUM to the argument."""
return x + NUM
def test_42():
"""Ensure that add_num() adds the correct NUM to its argument."""
added = add_num(42)
assert added == 53
We can use this for example to download a remote test data file and have all the functions in the file access it:
import os
def setup_module(module):
"""Store a copy of the remote test file."""
module.DATAFILE = get_remote_test_data('94935ac31d585f68041c08f87d1a19d4')
def test():
"""Perform test using cached remote input file."""
f = open(DATAFILE, 'rb')
# do the test
def teardown_module(module):
"""Clean up remote test file copy."""
os.remove(DATAFILE)
Class-level setup/teardown¶
Tests can be organized into classes that have their own setup/teardown functions. In the following
def add_nums(x, y):
"""Add two numbers."""
return x + y
class TestAdd42(object):
"""Test for add_nums with y=42."""
def setup_class(self):
self.NUM = 42
def test_1(self):
"""Test behavior for a specific input value."""
added = add_nums(11, self.NUM)
assert added == 53
def test_2(self):
"""Test behavior for another input value."""
added = add_nums(13, self.NUM)
assert added == 55
def teardown_class(self):
pass
In the above example, the setup_class
method is called first, then all the
tests in the class, and finally the teardown_class
is called.
Method-level setup/teardown¶
There are cases where one might want setup and teardown methods to be run
before and after each test. For this, use the setup_method
and
teardown_method
methods:
def add_nums(x, y):
"""Add two numbers."""
return x + y
class TestAdd42(object):
"""Test for add_nums with y=42."""
def setup_method(self, method):
self.NUM = 42
def test_1(self):
"""Test behavior for a specific input value."""
added = add_nums(11, self.NUM)
assert added == 53
def test_2(self):
"""Test behavior for another input value."""
added = add_nums(13, self.NUM)
assert added == 55
def teardown_method(self, method):
pass
Function-level setup/teardown¶
Finally, one can use setup_function
and teardown_function
to define a
setup/teardown mechanism to be run before and after each function in a module.
These take one argument, which is the function being tested:
def setup_function(function):
pass
def test_1(self):
"""First test."""
# do test
def test_2(self):
"""Second test."""
# do test
def teardown_function(function):
pass
Parametrizing tests¶
If you want to run a test several times for slightly different values, then
it can be advantageous to use the pytest
option to parametrize tests.
For example, instead of writing:
def test1():
assert type('a') == str
def test2():
assert type('b') == str
def test3():
assert type('c') == str
You can use the parametrize
decorator to loop over the different
inputs:
@pytest.mark.parametrize(('letter'), ['a', 'b', 'c'])
def test(letter):
"""Check that the input is a string."""
assert type(letter) == str
Tests requiring optional dependencies¶
For tests that test functions or methods that require optional dependencies (e.g. Scipy), pytest should be instructed to skip the test if the dependencies are not present. The following example shows how this should be done:
import pytest
try:
import scipy
HAS_SCIPY = True
except ImportError:
HAS_SCIPY = False
@pytest.mark.skipif('not HAS_SCIPY')
def test_that_uses_scipy():
...
In this way, the test is run if Scipy is present, and skipped if not. No tests should fail simply because an optional dependency is not present.
Using pytest helper functions¶
If your tests need to use pytest helper functions, such as
pytest.raises
, import pytest
into your test module like so:
import pytest
Prior to Astropy 2.0, it was possible to import pytest from a bundled version using e.g.:
from ...tests.helper import pytest
but this is no longer the recommended method.
Testing warnings¶
In order to test that warnings are triggered as expected in certain
situations, you can use the astropy.tests.helper.catch_warnings
context manager. Unlike the warnings.catch_warnings
context manager
in the standard library, this one will reset all warning state before
hand so one is assured to get the warnings reported, regardless of
what errors or warnings may have been emitted by other tests previously.
Here is a real-world example:
from astropy.tests.helper import catch_warnings
with catch_warnings(MergeConflictWarning) as warning_lines:
# Test code which triggers a MergeConflictWarning
out = table.vstack([t1, t2, t4], join_type='outer')
assert warning_lines[0].category == metadata.MergeConflictWarning
assert ("In merged column 'a' the 'units' attribute does not match (cm != m)"
in str(warning_lines[0].message))
pytest provides its own context manager
pytest.warns that, completely
analogously to pytest.raises
(see below) allows to probe explicitly
for specific warning classes and, through the optional match
argument,
messages. Note that when no warning of the specified type is
triggered, this will make the test fail. When checking for optional,
but not mandatory warnings, Astropy’s catch_warnings
is therefore the
better option, as it will collect any number of warning lines (including
zero).
Note
With pytest there is also the option of using the
recwarn function argument to test that
warnings are triggered within the entire embedding function.
This method has been found to be problematic in at least one case
(pull request 1174)
and the alternative of calling pytest.warns
with a warning type
argument of None
requires further processing of the recorded
warning(s), so the astropy.tests.helper.catch_warnings
context
manager is preferred in such cases.
Testing configuration parameters¶
In order to ensure reproducibility of tests, all configuration items are reset to their default values when the test runner starts up.
Sometimes you’ll want to test the behavior of code when a certain
configuration item is set to a particular value. In that case, you
can use the astropy.config.ConfigItem.set_temp
context manager to
temporarily set a configuration item to that value, test within that
context, and have it automatically return to its original value.
For example:
def test_pprint():
from ... import conf
with conf.set_temp('max_lines', 6):
# ...
Marking blocks of code to exclude from coverage¶
Blocks of code may be ignored by the coverage testing by adding a
comment containing the phrase pragma: no cover
to the start of the
block:
if this_rarely_happens: # pragma: no cover
this_call_is_ignored()
Image tests with pytest-mpl¶
Running image tests¶
We make use of the pytest-mpl plugin to write tests where we can compare the output of plotting commands with reference files on a pixel-by-pixel basis (this is used for instance in astropy.visualization.wcsaxes).
To run the Astropy tests with the image comparison, use:
python setup.py test -a "--mpl" --remote-data
However, note that the output can be very sensitive to the version of Matplotlib as well as all its dependencies (e.g. freetype), so we recommend running the image tests inside a Docker container which has a frozen set of package versions (Docker containers can be thought of as mini virtual machines). We have made a set of Docker container images that can be used for this. Once you have installed Docker, to run the Astropy tests with the image comparison inside a Docker container, make sure you are inside the Astropy repository (or the repository of the package you are testing) then do:
docker run -it -v ${PWD}:/repo astropy/image-tests-py35-mpl300:1.3 /bin/bash
This will start up a bash prompt in the Docker container, and you should see something like:
root@8173d2494b0b:/#
You can now go to the /repo
directory, which is the same folder as
your local version of the repository you are testing:
cd /repo
You can then run the tests as above:
python3 setup.py test -a "--mpl" --remote-data
Type exit
to exit the container.
You can find the names of the available Docker images on the Docker Hub.
Writing image tests¶
The README.rst
for the plugin contains information on writing tests with this plugin. The only
key addition compared to those instructions is that you should set
baseline_dir
:
from astropy.tests.image_tests import IMAGE_REFERENCE_DIR
@pytest.mark.mpl_image_compare(baseline_dir=IMAGE_REFERENCE_DIR)
This is because since the reference image files would contribute significantly to the repository size, we instead store them on the http://data.astropy.org site. The downside is that it is a little more complicated to create or re-generate reference files, but we describe the process here.
Generating reference images¶
Once you have a test for which you want to (re-)generate reference images, start up one of the Docker containers using e.g.:
docker run -it -v ${PWD}:/repo astropy/image-tests-py35-mpl300:1.3 /bin/bash
then run the tests inside /repo
with the --mpl-generate-path
argument, e.g:
cd repo
python3 setup.py test -a "--mpl --mpl-generate-path=reference_tmp" --remote-data
This will create a reference_tmp
folder and put the generated reference
images inside it - the folder will be available in the repository outside of
the Docker container. Type exit
to exit the container.
Make sure you generate images for the different supported Matplotlib versions using the available containers.
Uploading the reference images¶
Next, we need to add these images to the http://data.astropy.org server. To do this, open a pull request to this repository. The reference images for Astropy tests should go inside the testing/astropy directory. In that directory are folders named as timestamps. If you are simply adding new tests, add the reference files to the most recent directory.
If you are re-generating baseline images due to changes in Astropy, make a new
timestamp directory by copying one the most recent one, then replace any
baseline images that have changed. Note that due to changes between Matplotlib
versions, we need to add the whole set of reference images for each major
Matplotlib version. Therefore, in each timestamp folder, there are folders named
e.g. 1.4.x
and 1.5.x
.
Once the reference images are merged in and available on
http://data.astropy.org, update the timestamp in the IMAGE_REFERENCE_DIR
variable in the astropy.tests.image_tests
sub-module. Because the timestamp
is hard-coded, adding a new timestamp directory will not mess with testing for
released versions of Astropy, so you can easily add and tweak a new timestamp
directory while still working on a pull request to Astropy.
Writing doctests¶
A doctest in Python is a special kind of test that is embedded in a
function, class, or module’s docstring, or in the narrative Sphinx
documentation, and is formatted to look like a Python interactive
session–that is, they show lines of Python code entered at a >>>
prompt followed by the output that would be expected (if any) when
running that code in an interactive session.
The idea is to write usage examples in docstrings that users can enter verbatim and check their output against the expected output to confirm that they are using the interface properly.
Furthermore, Python includes a doctest
module that can detect these
doctests and execute them as part of a project’s automated test suite. This
way we can automatically ensure that all doctest-like examples in our
docstrings are correct.
The Astropy test suite automatically detects and runs any doctests in the
astropy source code or documentation, or in packages using the Astropy test
running framework. For example doctests and detailed documentation on how to
write them, see the full doctest
documentation.
Note
Since the narrative Sphinx documentation is not installed alongside
the astropy source code, it can only be tested by running python
setup.py test
, not by import astropy; astropy.test()
.
For more information on the pytest-doctestplus
plugin used by Astropy, see
pytest-doctestplus.
Skipping doctests¶
Sometimes it is necessary to write examples that look like doctests but that are not actually executable verbatim. An example may depend on some external conditions being fulfilled, for example. In these cases there are a few ways to skip a doctest:
Next to the example add a comment like:
# doctest: +SKIP
. For example:>>> import os >>> os.listdir('.') # doctest: +SKIP
In the above example we want to direct the user to run
os.listdir('.')
but we don’t want that line to be executed as part of the doctest.To skip tests that require fetching remote data, use the
REMOTE_DATA
flag instead. This way they can be turned on using the--remote-data
flag when running the tests:>>> datafile = get_data_filename('hash/94935') # doctest: +REMOTE_DATA
Astropy’s test framework adds support for a special
__doctest_skip__
variable that can be placed at the module level of any module to list functions, classes, and methods in that module whose doctests should not be run. That is, if it doesn’t make sense to run a function’s example usage as a doctest, the entire function can be skipped in the doctest collection phase.The value of
__doctest_skip__
should be a list of wildcard patterns for all functions/classes whose doctests should be skipped. For example:__doctest_skip__ = ['myfunction', 'MyClass', 'MyClass.*']
skips the doctests in a function called
myfunction
, the doctest for a class calledMyClass
, and all methods ofMyClass
.Module docstrings may contain doctests as well. To skip the module-level doctests include the string
'.'
in__doctest_skip__
.To skip all doctests in a module:
__doctest_skip__ = ['*']
In the Sphinx documentation, a doctest section can be skipped by making it part of a
doctest-skip
directive:.. doctest-skip:: >>> # This is a doctest that will appear in the documentation, >>> # but will not be executed by the testing framework. >>> 1 / 0 # Divide by zero, ouch!
It is also possible to skip all doctests below a certain line using a
doctest-skip-all
comment. Note the lack of::
at the end of the line here:.. doctest-skip-all All doctests below here are skipped...
__doctest_requires__
is a way to list dependencies for specific doctests. It should be a dictionary mapping wildcard patterns (in the same format as__doctest_skip__
) to a list of one or more modules that should be importable in order for the tests to run. For example, if some tests require the scipy module to work they will be skipped unlessimport scipy
is possible. It is also possible to use a tuple of wildcard patterns as a key in this dict:__doctest_requires__ = {('func1', 'func2'): ['scipy']}
Having this module-level variable will require
scipy
to be importable in order to run the doctests for functionsfunc1
andfunc2
in that module.In the Sphinx documentation, a doctest requirement can be notated with the
doctest-requires
directive:.. doctest-requires:: scipy >>> import scipy >>> scipy.hamming(...)
Skipping output¶
One of the important aspects of writing doctests is that the example output can be accurately compared to the actual output produced when running the test.
The doctest system compares the actual output to the example output verbatim
by default, but this not always feasible. For example the example output may
contain the __repr__
of an object which displays its id (which will change
on each run), or a test that expects an exception may output a traceback.
The simplest way to generalize the example output is to use the ellipses
...
. For example:
>>> 1 / 0
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
ZeroDivisionError: integer division or modulo by zero
This doctest expects an exception with a traceback, but the text of the
traceback is skipped in the example output–only the first and last lines
of the output are checked. See the doctest
documentation for
more examples of skipping output.
Ignoring all output¶
Another possibility for ignoring output is to use the
# doctest: +IGNORE_OUTPUT
flag. This allows a doctest to execute (and
check that the code executes without errors), but allows the entire output
to be ignored in cases where we don’t care what the output is. This differs
from using ellipses in that we can still provide complete example output, just
without the test checking that it is exactly right. For example:
>>> print('Hello world')
We don't really care what the output is as long as there were no errors...
Handling float output¶
Some doctests may produce output that contains string representations of floating point values. Floating point representations are often not exact and contain roundoffs in their least significant digits. Depending on the platform the tests are being run on (different Python versions, different OS, etc.) the exact number of digits shown can differ. Because doctests work by comparing strings this can cause such tests to fail.
To address this issue, the pytest-doctestplus
plugin provides support for a
FLOAT_CMP
flag that can be used with doctests. For example:
>>> 1.0 / 3.0 # doctest: +FLOAT_CMP
0.333333333333333311
When this flag is used, the expected and actual outputs are both parsed to find
any floating point values in the strings. Those are then converted to actual
Python float
objects and compared numerically. This means that small
differences in representation of roundoff digits will be ignored by the
doctest. The values are otherwise compared exactly, so more significant
(albeit possibly small) differences will still be caught by these tests.
Continuous integration¶
Overview¶
Astropy uses the following continuous integration (CI) services:
Travis for 64-bit Linux, OS X, and Windows setups
CircleCI for 32-bit Linux, documentation build, and visualization tests
These continuously test the package for each commit and pull request that is pushed to GitHub to notice when something breaks.
Astropy and many affiliated packages use an external package called
ci-helpers to provide
support for the generic parts of the CI systems. ci-helpers
consists of
a set of scripts that are used by the .travis.yml
and appveyor.yml
files to set up the conda environment, and install dependencies.
Dependencies can be customized for different packages using the appropriate
environment variables in .travis.yml
and appveyor.yml
. For more
details on how to set up this machinery, see the package-template and ci-helpers.
The 32-bit tests on CircleCI use a pre-defined Docker image defined here which includes a 32-bit Python environment. If you want to run tests for packages in the same way, you can use the same set-up on CircleCI as the core package, but just be sure to install Astropy first using:
easy_install pip
pip install astropy
For convenience, you can also use the astropy/affiliated-32bit-test-env
Docker image instead of astropy/astropy-32bit-test-env
- the former includes
the latest stable version of Astropy pre-installed.
In some cases, you may see failures on continuous integration services that you do not see locally, for example because the operating system is different, or because the failure happens with only 32-bit Python. The following sections explain how you can reproduce specific builds locally.
Reproducing failing 32-bit builds¶
If you want to run your tests in the same 32-bit Python environment that CircleCI uses, start off by installing Docker if you don’t already have it installed. Docker can be installed on a variety of different operating systems.
Then, make sure you have a version of the git repository (either the main Astropy repository or your fork) for which you want to run the tests. Go to that directory, then run Docker with:
$ docker run -i -v ${PWD}:/astropy_src -t astropy/astropy-32bit-test-env:1.6 bash
This will put you in the bash shell inside the Docker container. Once inside,
you can go to the astropy_src
directory, and you should see the files that
are in your local git repository:
root@5e2b89d7b07c:/# cd /astropy_src
root@5e2b89d7b07c:/astropy_src# ls
ah_bootstrap.py CONTRIBUTING.md pip-requirements-doc
appveyor.yml docs README.rst
astropy examples readthedocs.yml
astropy_helpers ez_setup.py setup.cfg
cextern licenses setup.py
CHANGES.rst MANIFEST.in static
circle.yml pip-requirements CITATION
pip-requirements-dev
You can then run the tests with:
root@5e2b89d7b07c:/astropy_src# python setup.py test
Pytest Plugins¶
The following pytest
plugins are maintained and used by Astropy. They are
included in the pytest-astropy
package, which is now required for testing
Astropy. More information on all of the plugins provided by the
pytest-astropy
package (including dependencies not maintained by Astropy)
can be found here.
pytest-remotedata¶
The pytest-remotedata plugin allows developers to control whether to run tests that access data from the internet. The plugin provides two decorators that can be used to mark individual test functions or entire test classes:
@pytest.mark.remote_data
for tests that require data from the internet@pytest.mark.internet_off
for tests that should run only when there is no internet access. This is useful for testing local data caches or fallbacks for when no network access is available.
The plugin also adds the --remote-data
option to the pytest
command
(which is also made available through the Astropy test runner).
If the --remote-data
option is not provided when running the test suite, or
if --remote-data=none
is provided, all tests that are marked with
remote_data
will be skipped. All tests that are marked with
internet_off
will be executed. Any test that attempts to access the
internet but is not marked with remote_data
will result in a failure.
Providing either the --remote-data
option, or --remote-data=any
, will
cause all tests marked with remote_data
to be executed. Any tests that are
marked with internet_off
will be skipped.
Running the tests with --remote-data=astropy
will cause only tests that
receive remote data from Astropy data sources to be run. Tests with any other
data sources will be skipped. This is indicated in the test code by marking
test functions with @pytest.mark.remote_data(source='astropy')
. Tests
marked with internet_off
will also be skipped in this case.
Also see Working with data files.
pytest-doctestplus¶
The pytest-doctestplus plugin provides advanced doctest features, including:
handling doctests that use remote data in conjunction with the
pytest-remotedata
plugin above (see Working with data files)approximate floating point comparison for doctests that produce floating point results (see Handling float output)
skipping particular classes, methods, and functions when running doctests (see Skipping doctests)
optional inclusion of
*.rst
files for doctests
This plugin provides two command line options: --doctest-plus
for enabling
the advanced features mentioned above, and --doctest-rst
for including
*.rst
files in doctest collection.
The Astropy test runner enables both of these options by default. When running
the test suite directly from pytest
(instead of through the Astropy test
runner), it is necessary to explicitly provide these options when they are
needed.
pytest-openfiles¶
The pytest-openfiles plugin allows for the detection of open I/O resources
at the end of unit tests. This plugin adds the --open-files
option to the
pytest
command (which is also exposed through the Astropy test runner).
When running tests with --open-files
, if a file is opened during the course
of a unit test but that file not closed before the test finishes, the test
will fail. This is particularly useful for testing code that manipulates file
handles or other I/O resources. It allows developers to ensure that this kind
of code properly cleans up I/O resources when they are no longer needed.
Also see Testing for open files.