python testing sprint June 20th-26th 2016

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The pytest core group held the biggest sprint in its history in June 2016, taking place in the black forest town Freiburg in Germany. In February 2016 we started a funding campaign on Indiegogo to cover expenses The page also mentions some preliminary topics:

  • improving pytest-xdist test scheduling to take into account fixture setups and explicit user hints.
  • provide info on fixture dependencies during –collect-only
  • tying pytest-xdist to tox so that you can do “py.test -e py34” to run tests in a particular tox-managed virtualenv. Also look into making pytest-xdist use tox environments on remote ssh-sides so that remote dependency management becomes easier.
  • refactoring the fixture system so more people understand it :)
  • integrating PyUnit setup methods as autouse fixtures. possibly adding ways to influence ordering of same-scoped fixtures (so you can make a choice of which fixtures come before others)
  • fixing bugs and issues from the tracker, really an endless source :)

Participants

Over 20 participants took part from 4 continents, including employees from Splunk, Personalkollen, Cobe.io, FanDuel and Dolby. Some newcomers mixed with developers who have worked on pytest since its beginning, and of course everyone in between.

Sprint organisation, schedule

People arrived in Freiburg on the 19th, with sprint development taking place on 20th, 21st, 22nd, 24th and 25th. On the 23rd we took a break day for some hot hiking in the Black Forest.

Sprint activity was organised heavily around pairing, with plenty of group discusssions to take advantage of the high bandwidth, and lightning talks as well.

Money / funding

The Indiegogo campaign aimed for 11000 USD and in the end raised over 12000, to reimburse travel costs, pay for a sprint venue and catering.

Excess money is reserved for further sprint/travel funding for pytest/tox contributors.