/doc/finding_tests.rst

 1Finding and running tests
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 3
 4nose, by default, follows a few simple rules for test discovery.
 5
 6* If it looks like a test, it's a test. Names of directories, modules,
 7  classes and functions are compared against the testMatch regular
 8  expression, and those that match are considered tests. Any class that is a
 9  `unittest.TestCase` subclass is also collected, so long as it is inside of a
10  module that looks like a test.
11   
12* Directories that don't look like tests and aren't packages are not
13  inspected.
14
15* Packages are always inspected, but they are only collected if they look
16  like tests. This means that you can include your tests inside of your
17  packages (somepackage/tests) and nose will collect the tests without
18  running package code inappropriately.
19
20* When a project appears to have library and test code organized into
21  separate directories, library directories are examined first.
22
23* When nose imports a module, it adds that module's directory to sys.path;
24  when the module is inside of a package, like package.module, it will be
25  loaded as package.module and the directory of *package* will be added to
26  sys.path.
27
28* If an object defines a __test__ attribute that does not evaluate to
29  True, that object will not be collected, nor will any objects it
30  contains.
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32Be aware that plugins and command line options can change any of those rules.