Hi Gary,
wellcome back, I hope the search for jobs and fame was fruitful
I'll definitely be around in the future. I'm not in a position to
confirm anything though.
I have been trying to get the current unit tests to work from the
command line e.g. ' ./unit_test_runner.py maths_fns/test_chi2.py'.
However, most of them fail beacuase the global variable Debug is not
defined. Chris tells me that this is because debug has been added to the
python __builtins__ namespace. This points to a couple of questions
1. why are we playing with __builtins__?
A number of relax features are placed into __builtin__, most
significantly the RelaxError and RelaxWarning systems. These mimic
and simply extend the normal python error and warning exception
systems. I did notice that this will be an important issue for stand
alone operation of individual unit tests - the calls to RelaxErrors
will necessarily cause exceptions. As for a solution I don't know the
best way of handling the __builtin__ objects and flags.
2. how do we get round this
I'm not sure.
as an aside __builtins__ is 'an implementation detail'
http://docs.python.org/lib/module-builtin.html and its use will prevent
relax from working on iron python, jython and pypy. So is this use of
__builtins__ something we need to reconsider...
Apart from __builtin__, how else would we have the equivalent of a
'global' variable (accessible to all parts of the program)? Are there
alternative solutions to using __builtin__ or are there alternative
solutions for getting the __builtin__ relax objects into the unit
tests? I don't see the addition of objects to __builtin__ as a big
implementation issue as __builtin__ exists in all python
implementations
(http://www.jython.org/docs/api/org/python/core/__builtin__.html and
Google picks up the rest of the scattered docs). Wouldn't global
variables have the same issue, being absent, with the stand alone unit
tests? Could an alternative be the creation of a new module which
sets up all the relax __builtin__ objects by importing 'error.py' and
setting dummy values of 'Debug' to zero?
Cheers,
Edward
Re: builtins