[Zope-Coders] If 'import Zope' is bad then...

[Shane Hathaway]

Evan Simpson wrote:

> Shane Hathaway wrote:
> 
>> Well, it's becoming apparent that unit tests for a lot of Zope products
>> really need to use "import Zope".  The CMF tests need to be cleaned up,
>> but you may find that not all dependencies on the Zope package and
>> products can be removed without major surgery. :-(
> 
> I strongly believe that 'import Zope' or equivalent should be usable 
> from unit tests.    The environmental changes it makes (for example, 
> Products.__path__ surgery, Products initialization, and HOME setup) 
> should be shared code.  Packages that are separable from Zope, such as 
> ZPT, would be able to use 'sys.modules.has_key' to detect when they are 
> imported in a Zope context.


That would make sense for functional tests and system tests.  But as I 
understand it, unit tests are not supposed to require a full application 
environment.

I found a pretty good description of different kinds of tests here:

http://www.dotcomfidence.com/htmls/Knowledge_base/Testing.html

The things we are putting in the "tests" directories are actually of 
various types, although we are using the unit testing framework for all 
of them.

Fortunately, as of a few days ago, you can now safely "import Zope", but 
when you do so, you are probably writing a test that is not a unit test. 
  Tests that work on their own have extra value.  (For one thing, they 
are faster. :-) )

Shane