[DOC] adding doctest guide to the testing documentation

[mdsaad2305]

Reference Issues/PRs

Fixes #4582

What does this implement/fix? Explain your changes.

Included doctest documentation within the testing and continuous integration section.

[mdsaad2305]

Should I make any additional changes to the file to pass the code-quality section?

[fkiraly]

Great, thanks!

Some small requests:

• linting fails in this PR, please fix that
• can you say explicitly how to run all doctests in sktime?

[mdsaad2305]

Hey, just needed some help before I implement these changes.

1. what kind of extension/package should we use to detect linting errors?
2. When you mentioned running "all doctests," did you mean running doctest on all the files? I just want to make sure I understand that part correctly

[fkiraly]

what kind of extension/package should we use to detect linting errors?

If you follow the link to "coding standards" on the page you are editing, I hope you'll find a guide that's explicit about this.
Let me know if it's not easy to find, then we may have to think about structure etc.

When you mentioned running "all doctests," did you mean running doctest on all the files? I just want to make sure I understand that part correctly

Yes, that's what I meant, thanks for asking.

[mdsaad2305]

Could you let me know if the code for running all the files is correct? It seems to be working fine for me, but I hope I don't end up confusing the newcomers.

[fkiraly]

Hm, I would have done pytest --doctest-modules, does that not work?

[mdsaad2305]

Might be an issue with my system but does using pytest normally take a long time?
Also, I think I'll use your command as it looks much simpler than mine and would be easier for newcomers to understand.
Thanks for the help

[mdsaad2305]

is this alright?

[yarnabrina]

Hm, I would have done pytest --doctest-modules, does that not work?

doctest is a standard library, it's always present. And it runs only the doctests. pytest is not standard, and will be available only if someone installs dev dependencies. And it is going to run all unit tests along with doctests by default, so that immediately increases the time duration.

So, my suggestion is to include ways to run with both, and specify that one can try with the pytest version only if dev dependencies are installed. And may be they can use pytest to run just doctests in case they pass -k "not test_" or similar (not tested).

[fkiraly]

So, my suggestion is to include ways to run with both, and specify that one can try with the pytest version only if dev dependencies are installed. And may be they can use pytest to run just doctests in case they pass -k "not test_" or similar (not tested).

Ah, I see - should we then mention both find . -name "*.py" -print0 | xargs -0 python -m doctest -v (on unix, no pytest installed) and pytest --doctest-modules (if you have pytest installed)?

[yarnabrina]

Exactly.

@mdsaad2305: can you also try to find a similar command for Windows users? It'll be good to document as well along with @fkiraly's above summary, if possible.

[mdsaad2305]

Sure, I’ve some work till Friday, so I’ll try to finish it during the weekend

[fkiraly]

Nice! Thanks, great compilation!