xdist: support for --boxed on windows

[pytestbot]

Originally reported by: Anonymous

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executing

py.test --boxed

on Windows failed with the error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "c:\python27\lib\site-packages\_pytest\main.py", line 74, in wrap_session
    doit(config, session)
  File "c:\python27\lib\site-packages\_pytest\main.py", line 106, in _main
    config.hook.pytest_runtestloop(session=session)
  File "c:\python27\lib\site-packages\_pytest\core.py", line 421, in __call__
    return self._docall(methods, kwargs)
  File "c:\python27\lib\site-packages\_pytest\core.py", line 432, in _docall
    res = mc.execute()
  File "c:\python27\lib\site-packages\_pytest\core.py", line 350, in execute
    res = method(**kwargs)
  File "c:\python27\lib\site-packages\_pytest\main.py", line 119, in pytest_runtestloop
    item.config.hook.pytest_runtest_protocol(item=item, nextitem=nextitem)
  File "c:\python27\lib\site-packages\_pytest\core.py", line 421, in __call__
    return self._docall(methods, kwargs)
  File "c:\python27\lib\site-packages\_pytest\core.py", line 432, in _docall
    res = mc.execute()
  File "c:\python27\lib\site-packages\_pytest\core.py", line 350, in execute
    res = method(**kwargs)
  File "c:\python27\lib\site-packages\pytest_xdist-1.8-py2.7.egg\xdist\plugin.py", line 85, in pytest_runtest_protocol
    reports = forked_run_report(item)
  File "c:\python27\lib\site-packages\pytest_xdist-1.8-py2.7.egg\xdist\plugin.py", line 105, in forked_run_report
    ff = py.process.ForkedFunc(runforked)
  File "c:\python27\lib\site-packages\py\_process\forkedfunc.py", line 30, in __init__
    pid = os.fork()
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'fork'

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• Bitbucket: https://bitbucket.org/pytest-dev/pytest/issue/193

[pytestbot]

Original comment by Ronny Pfannschmidt (BitBucket: RonnyPfannschmidt, GitHub: RonnyPfannschmidt):

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made the tb readable

[pytestbot]

Original comment by Ronny Pfannschmidt (BitBucket: RonnyPfannschmidt, GitHub: RonnyPfannschmidt):

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seems like there should be a better error message

[pytestbot]

Original comment by holger krekel (BitBucket: hpk42, GitHub: hpk42):

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also the docs should mention it - i fixed the readme and uploaded it to pypi.python.org for the current pytest-xdist release.

[pytestbot]

Original comment by Martin Fiers (BitBucket: martinfiers, GitHub: martinfiers):

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We also face the same problem right now and need boxed, because our unittests require a clean Python environment (and yes, we know good unittests should be independent, but we use one global object and cannot get around this). Using boxed fixes this problem.

Is there any way we could get a similar behavior on Windows?

Forking on Windows is afaik not possible. Would it be possible to use multiprocessing to run an additional process that handles the testcases?

[pytestbot]

Original comment by Ronny Pfannschmidt (BitBucket: RonnyPfannschmidt, GitHub: RonnyPfannschmidt):

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not yet and its probably easier to implement this using xdist

[pytestbot]

Original comment by Floris Bruynooghe (BitBucket: flub, GitHub: flub):

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(fix traceback again in desc which I seemed to have mangled accidentically)

[nicoddemus]

As I understand --boxed is supposed to be deprecated anyway now that xdist supports automatically restarts slaves in the event of a crash. Should we close this?

[RonnyPfannschmidt]

--boxed also has its uses in isolation, there should be a new mode in xdist (but thats like 6-10 months away)

[nicoddemus]

True!

Hmm this seems tricky to implement in Windows using just subprocess, because each process does the collection and test runs.

Any thoughts?

[RonnyPfannschmidt]

A test mode that's always collecting a special item should do for xdist still slow tho

[RonnyPfannschmidt]

wont fix