The new features in unittest backported to Python 2.4+.
Project description
unittest2 is a backport of the new features added to the unittest testing framework in Python 2.7 and onwards. It is tested to run on Python 2.6, 2.7, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4 and pypy.
To use unittest2 instead of unittest simply replace import unittest with import unittest2.
unittest2 is maintained in a mercurial repository. The issue tracker is on google code:
Thanks to Mark Roddy, there is a distribution of unittest2 0.5.1 for Python 2.3. This is maintained as a separate branch and is a separate download.
To avoid problems with pip installing the wrong distribution, the Python 2.3 version of unittest2 can’t be hosted on PyPI:
There was a separate version of unittest2 for Python 3. This is no longer needed, but still exists on PyPI. This had the project name “unittest2py3k” but uses the same package name (“unittest2”):
Classes in unittest2 derive from the appropriate classes in unittest, so it should be possible to use the unittest2 test running infrastructure without having to switch all your tests to using unittest2 immediately. Similarly you can use the new assert methods on unittest2.TestCase with the standard unittest test running infrastructure. Not all of the new features in unittest2 will work with the standard unittest test loaders, runners result objects however.
In general for documentation on unittest2 see the current latest documented of CPython:
New features include:
addCleanups - better resource management
many new assert methods including better defaults for comparing lists, sets, dicts unicode strings etc and the ability to specify new default methods for comparing specific types
assertRaises as context manager, with access to the exception afterwards
test discovery and new command line options (including failfast and better handling of ctrl-C during test runs)
class and module level fixtures: setUpClass, tearDownClass, setUpModule, tearDownModule
test skipping and expected failures
new delta keyword argument to assertAlmostEqual for more useful comparison and for comparing non-numeric objects (like datetimes)
load_tests protocol for loading tests from modules or packages
startTestRun and stopTestRun methods on TestResult
various other API improvements and fixes
Until I write proper documentation, the best information on all the new features is the development version of the Python documentation for Python 2.7:
Look for notes about features added or changed in Python 2.7.
Differences
Differences between unittest2 and unittest in Python 2.7:
assertItemsEqual does not silence Py3k warnings as this uses warnings.catch_warnings() which is new in Python 2.6 (and is used as a context manager which would be a pain to make work with Python 2.4).
TestCase.longMessage defaults to True because it is better. It defaults to False in Python 2.7 for backwards compatibility reasons.
python -m package doesn’t work in versions of Python before Python 2.7. The command line features of unittest2 are provided by a unit2 (and unit2.py) script instead.
unittest2 includes a very basic setuptools compatible test collector. Specify test_suite = 'unittest2.collector' in your setup.py. This starts test discovery with the default parameters from the directory containing setup.py, so it is perhaps most useful as an example (see unittest2/collector.py).
In unittest2 TextTestResult.stopTestRun is responsible for calling printErrors. This is desirable behaviour but in Python 3.1 TestResult.stopTestRun was documented as being empty and subclasses shouldn’t need to call it. This would make the change backwards incompatible and needs thinking about.
Issues
A TestResult object with unexpected successes returns True for result.wasSuccessful(). Difficult to know if this is the correct behaviour or not.
If a dotted path name is used for test discovery then a globally installed module/package will still be used in preference of one in the current directory. When doing discovery from a dotted path name we could check for this specific case.
The removeHandler decorator could also be a context manager.
Issue 8313:, <unprintable AssertionError object> message in unittest tracebacks, is hard to fix in versions of Python before 2.7. The fix in Python 2.7 relies on changes to both the traceback module and traceback objects. As the issue is rare I am leaving it unfixed in unittest2.
There are several places in unittest2 (and unittest) that call str(...) on exceptions to get the exception message. This can fail if the exception was created with non-ascii unicode. This is rare and I won’t address it unless it is actually reported as a problem for someone.
A comparison of text or long sequences (using assertSequenceEqual or assertMultiLineEqual etc) can take a long time to generate diffs for failure messages. These methods use prettyprint and difflib.
pip install -e . on Python3.2 in the unittest2 source will fail unless setuptools > 0.6.24 is already installed. This is a combination of needing a newer setuptools (to avoid the use of execfile) and setup_requires falling back to easy_install that doesn’t know how to upgrade setuptools just-in-time that prevents it being fixed in unittest2.
CHANGELOG
2025-08-06 - 1.1.0
Issue #15836: assertRaises(), assertRaisesRegex(), assertWarns() and assertWarnsRegex() assertments now check the type of the first argument to prevent possible user error. Based on patch by Daniel Wagner-Hall.
Issue #24134: assertRaises(), assertRaisesRegex(), assertWarns() and assertWarnsRegex() checks now emits a deprecation warning when callable is None or keyword arguments except msg is passed in the context manager mode.
Issue #22903: The fake test case created by unittest.loader when it fails importing a test module is now picklable.
2025-08-06 - 1.0.1
Unittest2 issue #94: Need at least 1.4 of six.
2025-08-06 - 1.0.0
Issue #22936: Permit showing local variables in tracebacks.
2014/11/05 - 0.8
Issue #22457: Honour load_tests in the start_dir of discovery.
Issue #22894: TestCase.subTest() would cause the test suite to be stopped when in failfast mode, even in the absence of failures.
2014/10/31 - 0.7.1
Fix for 0.7.0 being broken. Also switches from both manual and entrypoint scripts to just entrypoint scripts to reduce the possibility of similar oversights in future.
2014/10/31 - 0.7.0
This release contains backports from cPython 3.5 of all (I think) commits since 2010, as of today.
2014/10/28 - 0.6.0
Many thanks to Mark Roddy and Ezio Melotti who contributed substantially to this release.
Changed supported Python versions to start at 2.6, and include all released 3.x and pypy. (Robert Collins)
Invoking unit2 without args starts test discovery
Added TestCase.assertWarns and TestCase.assertWarnsRegexp context managers
Fix Python issue 9926. TestSuite subclasses that override __call__ are called correctly.
Removed unused maxDiff parameter from TestCase.assertSequenceEqual.
DeprecationWarning for unsupported result objects (missing addSkip method) became RuntimeWarning.
Addition of TestCase.assertWarns as a context manager.
2010/07/12 - 0.5.1
Reverted script names created by setuptools back to “unit2” instead of “unit2.py”. (Not necessary as setuptools creates stub .exes for console scripts anyway.)
2010/07/11 - 0.5.0
Addition of a setuptools compatible test collector (very basic). Specify test_suite = 'unittest2.collector' in your setup.py.
TestSuite.debug() and TestCase.debug() now execute cleanup functions and class and module level setups and teardowns.
No longer monkey-patch os.path.relpath for Python 2.4 / 2.5 so that projects don’t accidentally depend on our patching. Contributed by Konrad Delong.
Added a Python version specific unit2 entrypoint. This will, for example, create a unit2-2.6 script if unittest2 is installed with Python 2.6. (Requires setuptools or distribute.)
Python 2.3 compatibility (in the python2.3 branch of the repository), contributed by Mark Roddy.
setuptools console script entry points are created as ‘.py’ scripts on Windows.
Feature parity with the Python 2.7 final release.
2010/06/06 - 0.4.2
Improved help message for unit2 discover -h.
SkipTest in unittest.TestCase.setUpClass or setUpModule is now reported as a skip rather than an error.
Excessively large diffs due to TestCase.assertSequenceEqual are no longer included in failure reports. (Controlled by TestCase.maxDiff.)
Matching files during test discovery is done in TestLoader._match_path. This method can be overriden in subclasses to, for example, match on the full file path or use regular expressions for matching.
Addition of a setuptools compatible entrypoint for the unit2 test runner script. Contributed by Chris Withers.
Tests fixed to be compatible with Python 2.7, where deprecation warnings are silenced by default.
Feature parity with unittest in Python 2.7 RC 1.
2010/05/09 - 0.4.1
If test discovery imports a module from the wrong location (usually because the module is globally installed and the user is expecting to run tests against a development version in a different location) then discovery halts with an ImportError and the problem is reported.
Added docstrings to assertRegexpMatches and assertNotRegexpMatches.
Putting functions in test suites no longer crashes.
Feature parity with unittest in Python 2.7 Beta 2.
2010/04/08 - 0.4.0
Addition of removeHandler for removing the control-C handler.
delta keyword argument for assertAlmostEqual and assertNotAlmostEqual.
Addition of -b command line option (and TestResult.buffer) for buffering stdout / stderr during test runs.
Addition of TestCase.assertNotRegexpMatches.
Allow test discovery using dotted module names instead of a path.
All imports requiring the signal module are now optional, for compatiblity with IronPython (or other platforms without this module).
Tests fixed to be compatible with nosetest.
2010/03/26 - 0.3.0
assertSameElements removed and assertItemsEqual added; assert that sequences contain the same elements.
Addition of -f/–failfast command line option, stopping test run on first failure or error.
Addition of -c/–catch command line option for better control-C handling during test runs.
Added BaseTestSuite, for use by frameworks that don’t want to support shared class and module fixtures.
Skipped test methods no longer have setUp and tearDown called around them.
Faulty load_tests functions no longer halt test discovery.
Using non-strings for failure messages now works.
Potential for UnicodeDecodeError whilst creating failure messages fixed.
Split out monolithic test module into a package.
BUGFIX: Correct usage message now shown for unit2 scripts.
BUGFIX: __unittest in module globals trims frames from that module in reported stacktraces.
2010/03/06 - 0.2.0
The TextTestRunner is now compatible with old result objects and standard (non-TextTestResult) TestResult objects.
setUpClass / tearDownClass / setUpModule / tearDownModule added.
2010/02/22 - 0.1.6
Fix for compatibility with old TestResult objects. New tests can now be run with nosetests (with a DeprecationWarning for TestResult objects without methods to support skipping etc).
0.1
Initial release.
TODO
Document SkipTest, BaseTestSuite`
Release process
1. Make sure there is an entry in the Changelog in this document. 1. Update __version__ in unittest2/__init__.py 1. Commit. 1. Create a tag for the version (e.g. hg tag 0.6.0) 1. Push so there is no outstanding patches and no room for races. 1. Run make release to build an sdist and wheel and upload to pypi.
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