[Biopython-dev] Need guidance.

[Peter Cock]

Could someone else please take a look at Adil's pull request,
particularly his doctest tweaks and import magic in order to
test the code under Scripts/ rather than under Bio/ as usual:

https://github.com/biopython/biopython/pull/1306

(I'd just like the reassurance of a second opinion here, as
the import stuff has a lot of subtleties.)

Many thanks,

Peter


On Thu, Jun 15, 2017 at 10:33 AM, Peter Cock <p.j.a.cock at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Hi Adil,
>
> You've certainly learnt lots about imports and doctests - and probably
> know more than me now.
>
> I think you've made a sensible choice in restricting the special cases
> to your new test_testseq.py while leaving run_tests.py and the
> existing doctests as they are.
>
> Biopython is likely to keep supporting Python 2.7 until the year 2020, see:
>
> http://mailman.open-bio.org/pipermail/biopython-dev/2016-December/021613.html
>
> Peter
>
> On Thu, Jun 15, 2017 at 5:43 AM, Adil Iqbal <aiqbal85 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hey, though I managed to solve the importing issue, in my conversation with
>> Peter, I realized I made a rather large decision without consulting the
>> community.
>>
>> In my current build, I am omitting all modules that are not part of the Bio
>> package from executing doctests in version 2.7.
>>
>> My reason for doing that is copy-pasted below this message. Please read it
>> for context.
>>
>> I realize that 'testseq' is the only module this change effects but is it
>> something that we should extend to future modules?
>>
>> Best,
>> Adil
>>
>> That method will certainly succeed in importing the ['testseq'] module. The
>> issue is that once the importing is complete, the doctests are run. And the
>> doctest also contain an import statement. The doctests cause an error in 2.7
>> because they are subject to the same importing limitations as
>> "run_tests.py". I will now describe these limitations below:
>>
>> Prior to 3.3, hierarchical importing (with "dot" notation) required a
>> directory to be initialized with a "__init__.py" file. With the introduction
>> of 3.3, hierarchical importing was generalized to all directories,
>> regardless of initialization. This is why my commits were passing all tests
>> except 2.7.
>>
>> Since we can't initialize folders carelessly, its best to remove the non-Bio
>> modules from the "run_tests.py" file just prior to version 3.3. All versions
>> of python after-and-including 3.3 don't require an extra "__init__.py" file,
>> so the doctests will run fine on 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, and 3.6. That's why the most
>> recent build passed the Travis CI test.
>>
>> I agree that my import methods were becoming overly-complicated. In the most
>> recent build, I've eliminated the complicated code in favor of just deleting
>> non-Bio files.The only complicated code left is limited to just the unit
>> test ("test_testseq.py").
>>
>> Thankfully, the unit test for 'testseq' runs all of the same tests that are
>> in the doctests, so we can be confident that 'testseq' is compatible with
>> all versions of python. In the future, if "biopython" decides to stop
>> supporting python 2.7, I would be happy to remove the last bit of
>> complicated code.
>>
>> TL:DR - In 2.7 only: Modules outside 'Bio' package can be imported from
>> "run_tests.py", however, their doctests will likely fail because they must
>> also contain import statements. It's best to remove them from doctesting in
>> earlier versions of python and allow the unit tests to confirm
>> compatibility. (Only for non-Bio files in only 2.7).
>>
>>
>>
>>
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