Hello all,
At the Python Language Summit adding the "mock" library to the Python Standard
Library was discussed and agreed. Here is a very brief PEP covering the
decision and rationale.
All the best,
Michael Foord
PEP: 417
Title: Including mock in the Standard Library
Version: $Revision$
Last-Modified: $Date$
Author: Michael Foord <mich...@python.org>
Status: Draft
Type: Standards Track
Content-Type: text/plain
Created: 12-Mar-2012
Python-Version: 3.3
Post-History: 12-Mar-2012
Abstract
This PEP proposes adding the mock [1]_ testing library
to the Python standard library as ``unittest.mock``.
Rationale
Creating mock objects for testing is a common need in Python.
Many developers create ad-hoc mocks, as needed, in their test
suites. This is currently what we do in the Python test suite,
where a standardised mock object library would be helpful.
There are many mock object libraries available for Python [2]_.
Of these, mock is overwhelmingly the most popular, with as many
downloads on PyPI as the other mocking libraries combined.
An advantage of mock is that it is a mocking library and not a
framework. It provides a configurable and flexible mock object,
without being opinionated about how you write your tests. The
mock api is now well battle-tested and stable.
mock also handles safely monkeypatching and unmonkeypatching
objects during the scope of a test. This is hard to do safely
and many developers / projects mimic this functionality
(often incorrectly). A standardised way to do this, handling
the complexity of patching in the presence of the descriptor
protocol (etc) is useful. People are asking for a "patch" [3]_
feature to unittest. Doing this via mock.patch is preferable
to re-implementing part of this functionality in unittest.
Background
Addition of mock to the Python standard library was discussed
and agreed to at the Python Language Summit 2012.
References
[1] `mock library on PyPI<http://pypi.python.org/pypi/mock>`_
[2] http://pypi.python.org/pypi?%3Aaction=search&term=mock&submit=search
[3] http://bugs.python.org/issue11664
Copyright
This document has been placed in the public domain.
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