Differences to Django’s built-in test command

Differences

  • By default, migrations are not run, speeding up the tests. Use –migrate to run migrations.
  • In –parallel or –isolate mode, for non-sqlite3 in-memory databases, better-test appends _<number> to the database name, where <number> is a positive, non-zero integer.
  • Tests are always run in a subprocess, which can cause problems with 3rd party tools such as coverage.py, see coverage.py reporting very low coverage.
  • Tests are not run in the same order as the normal test command runs them, especially in –parallel mode.

Common Problems

Tests fail with better-test but pass without it

The number one reason for this is tests that depend on other tests leaking state. While bugs in better-test cannot be ruled out, usually if tests fail under better-test but pass without it, the issue is in the test suite being run. Use –isolate mode to find tests that depend on external state.

coverage.py reporting very low coverage

Since tests are run in a subprocess, coverage.py will not report the correct coverage by default. To get the correct coverage, run coverage.py with the --parallel-mode flag and use coverage combine after running the tests.