The package dependencies for this project are managed with Pipenv, and exported to requirements.txt for ease of install. Since this exercise is all about PyTest, pytest and a few core extensions are the main dependencies.
However, the additional tools in dev_requirements.txt may be useful if you are testing or maintaining the project itself:
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tox is used to automate testing of the code in all the currently supported versions of Python
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flake8 is a pretty good linter, and readily supported by VS Code
In the top level of the project, to create a virtual environment and install the default and development requirements, first create a virtual environment. I would recommend running a command like:
python3 -m venv .venv/
You can then activate this environment in a terminal by running:
source .venv/bin/activate
Though, assuming you have installed your virtual environment into your folder as described above, VS Code (usually) activates it automatically in new terminals. I find this very convenient!
After activating your virtual environment (if any, see above), install the required dev tools:
pip install -r docs/dev_requirements.txt
This includes pip-tools, which can be used to generate new versions of our top level requirements file:
pip-compile requirements.in
Or new versions of our dev requirements: (in the docs/ folder:)
pip-compile dev_requirements.in
I have also been experimenting with uv, a Rust-accelerated replacement for pip-compile: If you install uv, you can give this a try: (in the docs/ folder:)
uv pip compile dev_requirements.in -o dev_requirements.uv.txt
Which serves a similar purpose (identifying the newest compatible versions of all our dependencies as defined in requirements.in, and writing them, with explicit versions and dependency annotations, to requirements.txt), but is much, much faster...
As this project is implemented as a series of Pytest tests, "testing" mostly consists of ensuring that these tests run as expected in all supported versions of Python. I prefer using tox to automate this cross-version testing process.
In addition to installing tox (which is included in the dev requirements), you must also ensure that you have all the appropriate versions of Python installed and available for use - I strongly recommend using pyenv for this: For example, the following commands will install them:
pyenv install 2.7
pyenv install 3.6
pyenv install 3.7
pyenv install 3.8
pyenv install 3.9
pyenv install 3.10
pyenv install 3.11
And then this command will make sure that each version can be invoked directly:
pyenv global 2.7 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 3.10 3.11
You can then simply run tox, which will in turn run pytest under each version of python, and report the aggregated results (all tests must pass in all versions of Python in order for tox to consider a run successful):
tox
The list of supported Python versions is stored in tox.ini, and unfortunately there are some inconsistencies in how python version numbers are represented there. (This format is also very different from how pyenv describes Python versions, so there is not currently a convenient way to specify the supported Python versions in one place.)
The currently supported versions of Python should also be clearly "badged" at the top of README.md.
I have not officially added 3.12 support, as I had several different issues during my last attempt (circa Python 3.12.0a3), but I'd be happy to add it once things have stabilized.
I have not yet attempted to set up a CI/CD system for this project, as it doesn't change very often (and since it is literally made of tests, there is no clear separation to be made between unit and integration testing...)
But this probably wouldn't be too difficult to implement if there was some interest in it?