Set working directory

[FredrikMeyer]

Thanks for a great package!

My situation is this. We have a monorepo at work with several Python projects in it. When I run python-pytest-file, it chooses the repo root as the working directory, from where it can't find the module being tested.

In my case the directory I want to run pytest from is somewhere in the middle between the root and the test file.

Is it possible to somehow set the working directory?

And if not, it's a feature request :)

[wbolster]

i understand the issue and making it work in such situations would indeed be usfeul.

that said, i think it would be best if you can somehow convince projectile what the ‘root’ of your project it is, since emacs-python-pytest uses projectile for quite a few things, one of which is finding the right directory to run from. (another example is finding matching test files and so on.)

[wbolster]

https://docs.projectile.mx/projectile/projects.html

this may be useful. perhaps it makes sense to search for pytest.ini or something like that? it wouldn't be water tight since pytest options can also be set from different config files. 🤔

[FredrikMeyer]

Thanks for the answer!

I started down a little rabbit hole to see if I could temporarily change the projectile-project-root variable. I first tried adding it in .dir-locals.el but that messes things up with Projectile itself. Then I saw that you have the option to run hooks before and after the tests are run, so my idea was to read .dir-locals.el for some flag, and before the test run the projectile-project-root to the package directory, and then reset it afterwards.

But after inspecting the source code, I found that these hooks are run after the pytest buffer is created, so the method won't work.

So it looks like maybe one has to changes in pytest.el itself, maybe.

[FredrikMeyer]

Hm! I got an idea on how to get this to work: use the pre test hook to look in .dir-locals.el for some custom variable, then temporarily change the pytest command to PYTHONPATH=path/to/my/package pytest.

I'll test it later today.

[FredrikMeyer]

Update:

I think I solved it :)

I added the following hook:

  (add-hook 'python-mode-hook
            (lambda ()
              (when-let ((r (locate-dominating-file default-directory ".pyroot")))
                       (setq python-pytest-executable (concat "PYTHONPATH=" r " python -m pytest"))
                       )))

Then if I have a .pyroot file in the root of the project, the project is added to PYTHONPATH, and pytest finds the modules.

[wbolster]

awesome, that sounds like a reasonable solution! it won't even clash with projectile's behaviour that way.

[pkryger]

Do you think it would be a good idea to add this snippet with an explanation of the problem it solves to the readme?

[FredrikMeyer]

@pkryger Personally I really like it when Readmes contain solutions to common problems :) But if the issues list is labelled well, that could also help.

[wbolster]

pull requests to improve the readme are always welcome 😉