Having tests in Lib/test instead of inside the package makes it easier to grep the unittest package without grepping the tests. The Windows installer has an "install without tests" option which is easier to honour if the tests aren't in the package.

However, currently all packages that have test *packages* have the tests in the package rather than inside Lib/test. (There are no test packages inside Lib/test.)

Examples: email, distutils, ctypes, importlib, json, lib2to3, sqlite3

I also maintain an external port of unittest from Python 3. This is unittest2-py3k. Moving the tests would make it *slightly* harder to keep this in sync. I'm moving to maintaining this port as a set of patches rather than a separate branch. These patches can be applied automatically to unittest from py3k head. unittest2-py3k will be built automatically by a script, so it isn't a big deal.

3.1 should also be considered if the tests are moved. In theory this is not a bug fix so it shouldn't go in 3.1, but in practice it will make merging more difficult. This might not be a strong argument though, considering that 3.1 will accept only security fixes soon and only the few developers that work on unittest will be affected.

The same is true for 2.7 though, and that is getting bug fixes. svnmerge would no longer work (and to making the change would mean moving the tests in a point release).

+0, and I think we should hear from the maintainers of the affected packages first. For packages that are also externally maintained moving tests out may cause inconvenience to the maintainer.

That list of examples was non-exhaustive, there is also tkinter.

For the email package I would be in favor of moving the tests to Lib/test. I've always found it a bit inconvenient that they are in Lib/email. After hearing of Michael's intent with unittest, and given the evolution of email5 into email5.1, I am also considering the possibility of packaging email6 (when I get to it!) as a patch set against email5, which would make this change less of an issue for email6 development.

The 2.7 sync issue is a concern, but there are certainly precedents for differing file layouts between 3.x and 2.7. I'm willing myself to deal with this for email.

Barry may have a different opinion.

All of that said, this is a general enough issue that it may be appropriate to raise it on python-dev. Even if exceptions are made for individual packages, it would be good to agree on a general "best practices" rule for this for the stdlib.

grepping the code without the tests doesn't seem that compelling a use case to me, given that grep and find both provide options to prune directories. I do think that moving the tests out of the email package will make it harder to maintain and distribute as a separate package. However, if RDM thinks the burden won't be too high, and the advantages of a split outweigh the disadvantages, then I defer to him. I would still make a case for distributing email6 as a package available on Cheeseshop though, otherwise it just won't get much independent use until it's in the stdlib.

Yes, a cheeseshop package is definitely part of the plan, I didn't mean to imply otherwise. It won't be hard to automate the packaging, and indeed I'll wind up doing that anyway even if the tests stay inside Lib/email.

I will say that that I'm probably only +0.5 on this change...I like it from a consistency standpoint (heading toward all stdlib tests being in Lib/test) and it seems like it would make the job of packagers who desire a 'no tests' option easier. But things have been working fine as they are, which is why I'm not at a full +1 :).

For distutils tests, I’m ±0. I don’t see any major drawback nor any major benefit. Tarek will decide.

Of those, it makes the most sense to move the json tests to Lib/tests. Bob is not externally maintaining the 3.x version. It's all our now.

Also, it looks like importlib is in a maintenance mode now.

There is merit to keeping 2to3, ctypes, sqlite tests separate.

Currently all of the documentation files are still under Doc so we should keep it that way and not move them under package directory trees.

I have no issue with moving importlib into Lib/test as long as I can still run the tests with python3 -m test.importlib. I actually only put the tests in importlib.tests because that was common practice amongst newer packages in the stdlib.

And just to prevent some rumour from perpetuating, importlib is not in maintenance mode. In fact the API was heavily reworked in 3.2 and I plan on exposing more of the API publicly in 3.3 and hopefully to bootstrap as well. The only thing you could think is in maintenance mode is importlib's Chesseshop package, but that's just for 2.x compatibility and for Django's benefit.

Changing the title to reflect broader scope of this issue. Json tests were moved to Lib/test/json_tests in r86875.

I believe that the complete list of test files still located outside of Lib/test are:

tkinter/test
distutils/tests
ctypes/tests
lib2to3/tests
sqlite3/test
unittest/test

That last is somewhat ironic since Michael opened the issue :).

I'm considering working on some of the uncommitted patches for sqlite3, so I may take on moving those tests.

Talked to Michael in IRC. He isn't particularly in favor of the move of the unittest tests, but doesn't object if someone else wants to do it. So, unassigning the issue from him.

ctypes/tests is within my area of interests and may prove to be one of the harder pieces. I'll try to move it and report the results. I have not worked with the rest, so unless it is truly trivial this will have to wait for another volunteer.

I honestly don't see the point of moving tests around.

Two reasons for collecting all of the tests in a single location:

1. Facilitates test discovery
2. It makes packaging of CPython easier for Linux distros that prefer to leave the tests out of the core package

Patch attached to move sqlite3 tests under Lib/test, and remove Lib/test/test_sqlite.py.

Naming of files has been kept the same in the move from Lib/sqlite/test, to allow for easier merging of future patches.

Patch attached to move Lib/lib2to3/tests to Lib/test/test_lib2to3.

Naming of files has been kept the same in the move from
Lib/sqlite/test, to allow for easier merging of future patches.

This should be done with "hg mv" -- this will also allow to change the name while preserving the history if that's desirable.

The move will need to be done by someone with commit access. These patches came from using hg mv.

After doing the move, there is some cleanup needed in each. These changes are included in the attached patches.

Mercurial’s diff formats are actually able to represent file creation, deletion and rename.

I created issue #93839 which is basically a duplicate of this issue.

Let's close either this issue or #93839 then.

I closed #93839 as duplicate of this issue.

The following tests have now been moved by Victor:

• ctypes: #94041
• unittest: #94043

There are three to go:

$ ls -1d Lib/*/test{s,}
Lib/distutils/tests
Lib/lib2to3/tests
Lib/tkinter/test

PR to lib2to3: #94049

Lib/distutils/tests

The whole Lib/distutils/ directory should be removed in Python 3.12, so maybe we can just wait until it's removed.

PR to lib2to3: #94049

Merged: 616fa34

tkinter/ttk: I created PR #94070.

• Lib/ctypes/test/
• Lib/distutils/tests/ (slated for removal in 3.12)
• Lib/idlelib/idle_test/ (request to leave in place)
• Lib/lib2to3/tests/
• Lib/tkinter/test/ (PR)
• Lib/unittest/test/

As I have requested before, and as more or less agreed to, please remove idlelib from this list.
#54781 (comment)
Note: 'idlelib.idle_test' appears 122 times in idlelib. About 40% of the occurrences, the directory, and at least one of its files, should remain in any case.

Brett, I take it that the checkmarck for distutils tests means these are ok to leave as is, not move!

@merwok that was my intent. As @vstinner pointed out earlier, with distutils on its way out I don't think it's worth the effort.

I created PR #94145 for IDLE tests, even if @terryjreedy asked to not move them. I would prefer to move the tests, but I will follow Terry's decision, he maintains IDLE. I wrote a PR to see the consequences of moving tests. See my comment in the PR.

Lib/idlelib/idle_test/ is the last Lib/ sub-directory which contains tests which are not under Lib/test/. I wait for @terryjreedy's last word on my PR #94145 to see if we move IDLE tests, or if we leave tests there and just close the issue.