Document test processes & dependency installation

[davidjb]

At present, there's no information in the README with regards to what tests should be run for this project and how to setup your environment and run them as a contributor.

Someone who's worked with Python/Django before probably knows to start looking at doing pip install -e . and running python manage.py test but setting that out explicitly would help. But that's not the end of the story -- delving into the project's files, there's https://github.com/microsoft/mssql-django/blob/dev/tox.ini but in order to run tox at all requires setting up your environment with a number of various dependencies and files: https://github.com/microsoft/mssql-django/blob/dev/azure-pipelines.yml (with tox itself, a git clone of Django, SQL Server instance running locally etc).

Having the information detailed and documented in the README would be fantastic to help take the guesswork out of ensuring a PR passes tests locally before committing.

Edit: here's my current process for my own or others' reference:

docker pull mcr.microsoft.com/mssql/server:2019-latest
docker run --name sqlserver -e 'ACCEPT_EULA=Y' -e 'SA_PASSWORD=MyPassword42' -p 1433:1433 -d mcr.microsoft.com/mssql/server:2019-latest

cd path/to/mssql-django
python3 -m venv .
source ./bin/activate
pip install -e
pip install django==3.1.8
# See https://github.com/microsoft/mssql-django/issues/10
sed -i 's/"ODBC Driver 17 for SQL Server"/"FreeTDS", "host_is_server": True/g' testapp/settings.py 
python manage.py test

docker rm -f sqlserver 
# or stop with `docker stop sqlserver` and leave it there for next time

[vwarchu]

Hi David, thanks for the note - your suggestions are appreciated. This has now been added to our short-term backlog.