Thank you Massimo for the response. os.environ["WEB2PY_USE_DB_TESTING"]= "1"
is the correct way to set env. variables, and "modification of os.environ affect both the running program and subprocesses created by Python" (Python essential reference 4th ed.). In my case after all, both ways are succeeding in transferring env variables to the models: either through passing a --config=MYCONFIG, or setting them in the setUP methods of unittest.TestCase subclasses. The problems were in the 'if' evaluation for the first case, and a restart of the shell in the second.. I chose finally the second method, as it does not create one more file (e.g. MYCONFIG.py) in the directories, and keeps the setting definition near where it belongs: at the unittest.TestCase construction. --
