setup.py tests is deprecated

[johnhawkinson]

I'm in no way up on the world of Python packaging, but CONTRIBUTING.rst says

Installing dependencies and running tests can be done with:
python setup.py test

However setup.py --help-commands advises>

  test              run unit tests after in-place build (deprecated)

Which appears to be confirmed by https://setuptools.readthedocs.io/en/stable/userguide/commands.html#test.

Warning
test is deprecated and will be removed in a future version. Users
looking for a generic test entry point independent of test runner are
encouraged to use tox

However, I'm not sure how much of a big deal this is, but there doesn't appear to be an open issue on it, so filing one here and now.

[hemberger]

Thanks for the heads up! I assume we would then remove python setup.py test as an entrypoint into running the tests, and just rely on invoking pytest; that is, I don't think we need to introduce a dependency on tox (though maybe there's a good reason to use it). This might also require a few small changes to setup.py.

However, speaking of setup.py, that is being deprecated as well (in favor of a declarative setup.cfg), as far as I can tell from https://setuptools.readthedocs.io/en/latest/userguide/quickstart.html#transitioning-from-setup-py-to-setup-cfg.

[moy]

IIRC, python setup.py test is a bit more than an alias for cd tests && pytest: it also deals with dependencies. That would be nice to keep the possibility to run tests without installing dependencies manually.

Indeed, maybe it's just time to move away from setup.py. Poetry seems to be one of the alternatives to look at.