unittest2 is a backport of the new features added to the unittest testing
framework in Python 2.7. It is tested to run on Python 2.4 - 2.6.

To use unittest2 instead of unittest simply replace ``import unittest`` with
``import unittest2``.

Classes in unittest2 derive from the equivalent classes in unittest, so it
should be possible to use the unittest2 test running infrastructure without
having to switch all your tests to using unittest2 immediately. Similarly
you can use the new assert methods on ``unittest2.TestCase`` with the standard
unittest test running infrastructure. Not all of the new features in unittest2
will work with the standard unittest test loaders and runners however.

New features include:

* ``addCleanups`` - better resource management
* *many* new assert methods including better defaults for comparing lists,
  sets, dicts unicode strings etc and the ability to specify new default methods
  for comparing specific types
* ``assertRaises`` as context manager, with access to the exception afterwards 
* test discovery and new command line options 
* test skipping and expected failures
* ``load_tests`` protocol for loading tests from modules or packages 
* ``startTestRun`` and ``stopTestRun`` methods on TestResult
* various other API improvements and fixes

.. note:: Command line usage

    In Python 2.7 you invoke the unittest command line features (including test
    discover) with ``python -m unittest <args>``. As unittest is a package, and
    the ability to invoke packages with ``python -m ...`` is new in Python 2.7,
    we can't do this for unittest2.
    
    Instead unittest2 comes with a script ``unit2``. 
    `Command line usage <http://docs.python.org/dev/library/unittest.html#command-line-interface>`_::
    
        unit2 discover
        unit2 -v test_module
    
    There is also a copy of this script called ``unit2.py``, useful for Windows
    which uses file-extensions rather than shebang lines to determine what
    program to execute files with. Both of these scripts are installed by
    distutils.

Until I write proper documentation, the best information on all the new features
is the development version of the Python documentation for Python 2.7:

* http://docs.python.org/dev/library/unittest.html

There is some information about the new features in 
`New and improved: new features in unittest 
<http://code.google.com/p/unittest-ext/source/browse/trunk/unittest2/unittest2.txt>`_.

Look for notes about features added or changed in Python 2.7.

unittest2 is maintained in an SVN repository courtesy of google code:

* `unittest2 on google code <http://code.google.com/p/unittest-ext/source/browse/#svn/trunk/unittest2>`_


Differences
===========

Differences between unittest2 and unittest in Python 2.7:

``assertSameElements`` does not silence Py3k warnings as this uses
``warnings.catch_warnings()`` which is new in Python 2.6 (and is used as a
context manager which would be a pain to make work with Python 2.4).

The underlying dictionary storing the type equality functions on TestCase is a
custom object rather than a real dictionary. This allows TestCase instances to
be deep-copyable on Python versions prior to 2.7.

``TestCase.longMessage`` defaults to True because it is better. It defaults to
False in Python 2.7 for backwards compatibility reasons.

``python -m package`` doesn't work until Python 2.7, to provide the command line
features a ``unit2`` (and ``unit2.py``) script is provided instead.


CHANGELOG
=========

0.1
---

Initial release.
