Test suite: replace nose with pytest [2025] (#603 follow-up)

[fermino]

This is a follow-up on the great work by sbraz on #603.

The objective is to migrate away from nose to pytest and given that quite some things have changed in master I'm thinking on splitting the work on a per-file basis. In the meantime things will be compatible and it will be a lot easier to review and approve changes in small batches. I will keep the list updated with referenced PRs as we get through it.

Any help is appreciated! :)

Test files:

• tests/requirements.txt
• tests/SConscript
• tests/test_formatters/test_csv.py
• tests/test_formatters/test_json.py
• tests/test_formatters/test_others.py
• tests/test_formatters/test_py.py
• tests/test_formatters/test_sh.py
• tests/test_mains/test_dedupe.py
• tests/test_mains/test_hash.py
• tests/test_mains/test_is_reflink.py
• tests/test_options/test_cache.py
• tests/test_options/test_clamp.py
• tests/test_options/test_color.py
• tests/test_options/test_equal.py
• tests/test_options/test_help.py
• tests/test_options/test_hidden_dirs.py
• tests/test_options/test_keep_hardlinks.py
• tests/test_options/test_km.py
• tests/test_options/test_match_basenames.py
• tests/test_options/test_match_with_extension.py
• tests/test_options/test_match_without_extension.py
• tests/test_options/test_merge_directories.py
• tests/test_options/test_mtime_window.py
• tests/test_options/test_newer_than.py
• tests/test_options/test_no_backup.py
• tests/test_options/test_pass_files.py
• tests/test_options/test_perms.py
• tests/test_options/test_rankby.py
• tests/test_options/test_replay.py
• tests/test_options/test_size.py
• tests/test_options/test_sorting.py
• tests/test_options/test_stdin.py
• tests/test_options/test_symlinks.py
• tests/test_robustness/test_8Mlongpathfiles.py
• tests/test_robustness/test_badlinks_as_args.py
• tests/test_robustness/test_bigfiles.py
• tests/test_robustness/test_collisions.py
• tests/test_robustness/test_manyfiles.py
• tests/test_robustness/test_manylongpathfiles.py
• tests/test_robustness/test_path_doubles.py
• tests/test_types/test_badlink.py
• tests/test_types/test_baduids.py
• tests/test_types/test_duplicate.py
• tests/test_types/test_empty_dirs.py
• tests/test_types/test_empty_files.py
• tests/test_types/test_nonstripped.py
• tests/utils.py

Non-test files:

• docs/_build/man/.doctrees/developers.doctree
• docs/_build/man/.doctrees/environment.pickle
• docs/_build/man/.doctrees/install.doctree
• docs/_build/man/.doctrees/testing.doctree
• docs/developers.rst
• docs/install.rst
• docs/testing.rst
• docs/index.rst - remove/update references Travis etc

[RayOei]

Hi @fermino, it seems you are becoming the new maintainer 👍
I can take a stab at this? Any idea how you want to approach it exactly? It may be useful to be able to indicate some item/task is taken/worked on to prevent waste.
Maybe add a discussion for this particular issue? Although, I just noticed it is not enabled in this project... hmmmm

[RayOei]

And additionally: how do you want to use the work @sbraz has done? It may be better to move his branch "here" (or local fork obviously) and do the rebase? Unless he is willing to pick up the work again, I get the impression he doesn't have the time at this point. And I can imagine he may not be too thrilled to pick up work and may get forgotten again.

[fermino]

I will try to help with what I can in my free time :) I really like the project and I don't want to see it dying! It'd be awesome if we can get things going at least slowly but steady.

I haven't started yet with this issue but I feel like if we get rid of compiling and testing issues then the rest (specially those data bugs I've been seeing around lately) will be a lot easier.

Right now the goal would be to get rid of nose and its dependencies to be able to build it properly in ubuntu24. I thought to split the whole thing and do small PRs for that very same reason: merging small stuff is a lot easier than the whole batch. I personally don't have the time to do the whole rebase at once so that was my reasoning, but if you happen to have the time and would prefer picking it up that way is totally fine with me. If not, maybe cherry-picking some changes or just straight up making and committing them with appropiate credit would be good too. I will have the time to do some of that so coordination would be great!

[sbraz]

I get the impression he doesn't have the time at this point

Yeah sorry everyone :/ Let me know if I can help but I honestly don't even remember what the test suite looked like by now, it's been too long. If the package does work again with pytest, I'd be happy to add it back to Gentoo at some point though :)

[fermino]

Don't you worry about it! If we can get this through it would be awesome to have it again in gentoo :)

[RayOei]

I really like the project and I don't want to see it dying!

Yup 👍

I'll give it a try with rebasing sbraz' branch on master and see what happens.
I have quickly looked into develop but that is another can of worms at this time. Many useful improvements though but getting that merged as one is likely not a wise choice. Too bad it was abandoned. Anywayy.... I should not derail this particular issue 😊

[fermino]

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the fact that all the issues merged in develop were closed but there were not many users using that release. It's gonna be a bit of a pain but we'll burn that bridge when we get to it 😆

I also found this, which might prove useful https://github.com/pytest-dev/nose2pytest

[vassilit]

All tests have been migrated