The nose project

While the PyUnit project was folded into Python 2.1 years ago, there are several active projects that extend that functionality. I'll try to write about the most important ones in the next couple of weeks, but I'll start with what seems to be one of the most active and widely applicable: nose.

Nose extends the basic functionality of the unittest package with improved features for writing, finding and running tests. What's most intriguing is it's plugin architecture, with an ecosystem of third party plugins already built on it.

Michael Foord's Voidspace blog points out a fascinating email thread on the Testing in Python mailing list about the future of the nose framework, where Jason Pellerin points out that nose's LGPL license is keeping some contributors away. I assume that could include plugin developers.