Move test/support.py into a test.support subpackage

[cjerdonek]

BPO	15494
Nosy	@loewis, @ncoghlan, @pitrou, @ezio-melotti, @merwok, @bitdancer, @florentx, @cjerdonek, @shihai1991
PRs	bpo-40275: Use new test.support helper submodules in tests #20824
Files	move_test_support.patch: moves test.test_support to the test.support

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = 'https://github.com/ncoghlan'
closed_at = <Date 2013-07-28.10:56:43.943>
created_at = <Date 2012-07-30.01:37:10.932>
labels = ['easy', 'type-feature', 'tests']
title = 'Move test/support.py into a test.support subpackage'
updated_at = <Date 2020-06-15.13:05:48.554>
user = 'https://github.com/cjerdonek'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2020-06-15.13:05:48.554>
actor = 'shihai1991'
assignee = 'ncoghlan'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2013-07-28.10:56:43.943>
closer = 'python-dev'
components = ['Tests']
creation = <Date 2012-07-30.01:37:10.932>
creator = 'chris.jerdonek'
dependencies = []
files = ['30850']
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 15494
keywords = ['patch', 'easy']
message_count = 40.0
messages = ['166848', '166849', '166852', '166854', '166858', '166864', '166871', '166872', '166873', '173721', '173722', '173723', '173727', '173732', '173733', '173734', '173736', '173737', '173757', '173762', '173790', '173791', '173792', '173799', '173826', '173849', '173906', '173907', '173908', '185515', '185588', '185590', '185618', '188541', '192609', '192616', '192623', '193816', '193817', '193955']
nosy_count = 13.0
nosy_names = ['loewis', 'ncoghlan', 'pitrou', 'ezio.melotti', 'eric.araujo', 'r.david.murray', 'flox', 'chris.jerdonek', 'python-dev', 'mjdorma', 'sptonkin', 'italip', 'shihai1991']
pr_nums = ['20824']
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'fixed'
stage = 'resolved'
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = 'enhancement'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue15494'
versions = ['Python 3.3', 'Python 3.4']

[cjerdonek]

This issue is to move test/support.py into a test.support subpackage as discussed in bpo-15403.

This can be done post-release.

[cjerdonek]

If people are okay with populating test/support/init.py with code (at least initially), the first patch could be to move support.py into test/support/init.py. One nice thing about this approach is that the calling code won't need to change.

The second patch could be to move test/script_helper.py into the package.

[ezio-melotti]

I'd prefer to keep test.support as a single module, rather than converting it to a package.
Most of the time I open up test.support when I'm trying to find some function, so having more files will only make this more complicated.

[ncoghlan]

Note that I don't think test.support itself should be broken up - I don't see any good reason to split the current grab bag of functionality out into submodules, so you'd just have support/init.py open instead.

This is really about giving us a better way to organise the *other* helper modules like script_helper and make them easier to find.

[loewis]

-1. test.support is not at all too large for a single module; there is no point in refactoring it.

Without a specific patch to review which proposes some specific change, I'm rejecting this change request.

[ncoghlan]

Martin, this change has been specifically requested by me to better organise all the support code that ISN'T in test.support.

That file is already huge, and I'm not going to make it even bigger with all the test infrastructure needed for generating packaging heirarchies and zip files and invoking Python subprocesses in various ways.

However, that support code *does* need to be made more discoverable (so we stop reinventing these wheels badly).

A package with the current support.py as its __init__.py is the obvious solution.

[loewis]

So who is going to provide a patch for it, and when?

I don't think the tracker is the right place to keep list of things that someone wants to do some day. There isn't an issue "Python should have a JIT", either. Tracker issues should be actionable at the time the issue is submitted, unless there is a clear criterion on which to defer the issue.

If the objective is to just put the module into an __init__.py, it takes just a few minutes, no?

[ncoghlan]

As noted in the original post, this is a change which will be made once the 3.3 release is out the door. It's origin lies in the fact that one of the new pkgutil tests currently lives in test_runpy because test_runpy has much better infrastructure for that kind of thing.

While figuring out where to put some shared infrastructure for the runpy, pkgutil, import and importlib tests, I came to the conclusion that having support.py, script_helper.py and whatever we decide to call the new module all living in the main test directory makes the support modules unnecessarily hard to find, and merging them all into a single massive support.py module doesn't make sense either.

Chris has been working on the patches. We were going to try to get this refactoring done before the release, but enough other things have ended up coming up that Antoine and I decided it was better to wait.

[ncoghlan]

I've just gone through and made sure all the related issues are correctly assigned to me.

[ezio-melotti]

Tonight I was looking for assert_python_failure() in test.support, and it took me a while to figure out it was in script_helper.py instead.

As suggested in msg166778 by Antoine, I would rather pick option 1 and merge everything in test.support, rather than further scattering these functions among different files.