nose-knows is a nose plugin for figuring out which unit tests you should run after modifying code. It works by tracing your code while you run unit tests, and creating an output file that can be used later.

Or you can download the latest development version , which may contain new features.

Using nose-knows

nose-knows can be invoked in either input or output mode. In output mode ( --knows-out ) it will generate a .knows file that contains the mapping from a file in your code tree to the set of unit tests that run it. In input mode, it uses the .knows file to selectively run unit tests based on the files you pass in. Note: here, $BASE_DIR is the name of the base project directory, not the (direct / relative) path to it. It is used to figure out how to rename the file names in the output file to make it more portable.

Creating a .knows file:

eyal-01575:src eyal$ nosetests --with-knows --knows-dir=$BASE_DIR --knows-out ..................................................................... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ran 62 tests in 0.444s OK

The .knows file now contains the following:

warehouse/src/load_data/sql_utils/checkpoints.py: src.tests.test_load_data_statements:TestSQLStatement.test_finalize src.tests.test_load_data_checkpoints:TestCheckpoints.test_checkpoint_finalize_with_delete src.tests.test_load_data_checkpoints:TestCheckpoints.test_checkpoint_finalize src.tests.test_load_data_checkpoints:TestCheckpoints.test_checkpoint_with_previous_checkin src.tests.test_load_data_checkpoints:TestCheckpoints.test_checkpoint src.tests.test_load_data_statements:TestSQLStatement.test_to_sql_import src.tests.test_load_data_statements:TestSQLStatement.test_to_sql_schema_update

You can now run nose-knows in input mode, passing in load_data/sql_utils/checkpoints.py :

eyal-01575:src eyal$ nosetests --with-knows --knows-dir=$BASE_DIR load_data/sql_utils/checkpoints.py ....... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ran 7 tests in 0.003s OK

There is also (experimental at this point) support for py.test. You can generate your .knows file via:

eyal-01575:src eyal$ py.test --with-knows --knows-dir=$BASE_DIR --knows-out ===================== test session starts ====================== platform darwin -- Python 2.7.1 -- pytest-2.3.4 plugins: nose-knows collected 62 items tests/test_load_data_checkpoints.py .... tests/test_load_data_from_mysql.py .. tests/test_load_data_statements.py ..... tests/test_process_data_denormalize.py ........ tests/test_process_data_mapping.py ..... tests/test_transform_data_daemon.py . tests/test_transform_data_table_follower.py ................. tests/test_transformers/test_avg_data.py .. tests/test_transformers/test_count.py ... tests/test_transformers/test_join.py .... tests/test_transformers/test_json_data.py ..... tests/test_transformers/test_min_data.py .. tests/test_transformers/test_std_data.py .. tests/test_transformers/test_sum_data.py .. ================== 62 passed in 2.18 seconds ===================

And selectively run specific unit tests like so:

eyal-01575:src eyal$ py.test --with-knows --knows-dir=$BASE_DIR load_data/sql_utils/checkpoints.py ===================== test session starts ====================== platform darwin -- Python 2.7.1 -- pytest-2.3.4 plugins: nose-knows collected 62 items tests/test_load_data_checkpoints.py .... tests/test_load_data_statements.py ... =================== 7 passed in 0.30 seconds ===================

The best practice here is to have a system like Jenkins run the unit test suite once in a while to create this map (we have it running daily), and then creating a bash function/script to download the knows output file from Jenkins and run it against the set of changed files from a commit. Ours looks like:

function grab_latest_knows_output() { NOW=`date +%s` if [ ! -f $KNOWS_FILE_TMP ] ; then curl --compressed $KNOWS_FILE_URL > $KNOWS_FILE_TMP else KNOWS_FILE_AGE=`stat -c %Y $KNOWS_FILE_TMP` if [ `expr $NOW - $KNOWS_FILE_AGE` -gt "86400" ] ; then curl --compressed $KNOWS_FILE_URL > $KNOWS_FILE_TMP else echo "Using latest knows output file." fi fi } function test_changed() { grab_latest_knows_output nosetests $KNOWS_FLAGS `git diff --name-only --cached origin | xargs` } function run_tests_for() { grab_latest_knows_output nosetests $KNOWS_FLAGS $@ }