Nick Coghlan wrote: > Tim Golden wrote: >> I admit: this did occur to me on the train this am. While I >> try to think of a robust way to handle this, other people have >> proposed variations on pid-based / tempdir based filenames instead >> of the same name for each test. In principle this sounds good to me, >> but I'm not at all well-placed to assess the impact it might have >> on the unit tests in general. > > Personally, I've never really understood the purpose of > test_support.TESTFN. Whenever I've needed a temporary file for a test, I > just use the tempfile module (e.g. test_cmd_line_script, test_runpy). > Tests using that module don't care if the old files take 'a while' to > get deleted on Windows, as tempfile uses a different name each time anyway. > > Is using a fixed TESTFN just an old approach that predates the existence > of a robust tempfile module in the standard library?
I'm a neophyte when it comes to core development, so I've simply cloned existing tests, assumed that there was some kind of (possibly unwritten) standard which used test_support.TESTFN. As I look at it, though it seems a slightly odd choice, although it has variants for testing unicode filenames specifically which I imagine are useful in some places. I'm perfectly happy to run through the test suite, patching it one way or another. The trouble is that I've little confidence that I can assess whether or not such a change will have affected the actual meaning of a test. And, since these are tests, Quis custodiet...? TJG _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
