Run tests in module doc update

[brycegbrazen]

Add a bit of additional information about running tests in a module for new users.

TODO:

Would still likely to clarify if you can use globbing at all with when running a test for a specific module (the * operator)

[nicoddemus]

IMHO this is a bit verbose, I think it is enough to mention that the user can pass the absolute or relative path to the test file.

Something like this:

**Run tests in a module**

You can pass the relative or the absolute path to a test module directly:

.. code-block:: bash

    pytest test_mod.py

I don't feel the need to mention that pytest will not look for test_mod.py recursively, few tools work like that (without a separate flag that is).

(I would leave a suggestion but GH does not let me place a suggestion outside the diff)

[nicoddemus]

@The-Compiler, which teaches pytest for a living, is this something users in general get confused about?

[The-Compiler]

I don't think this ever came up, no. FWIW, here is the slide I have for it:

I agree that it's not really the job of the pytest documentation to explain this in detail. There's nothing special about pytest here, any other tool that takes a file name would work the exact same way.

@brycegbrazen can you elaborate a bit on why you think this is necessary, or why you would consider that pytest would do anything like this in the first place?

[brycegbrazen]

Hi all thanks for the feedback.

I'm migrating a repo from using unittest to pytest and the test discovery code pattern I was using was * by default, and then <basename>.py if I wanted to run one specific file's tests.

Looking at the unittest documentation though, it seems they definitely are built off of the assumption that you will use the '*' operator (as the default value for example is test*.py).

So perhaps my assumptions about how things would work are biased coming from unittest.

I agree my pass was a bit verbose. Perhaps something shorter like:

**Run tests in a module**

You can pass the relative or the absolute path to a test module directly:

.. code-block:: bash

    pytest test_mod.py

Note that pytest has no special handling for the '*' operator.

[nicoddemus]

Would still likely to clarify if you can use globbing at all with when running a test for a specific module (the * operator)

pytest itself does not do any processing in that front, your shell does the * processing (as with any other tool).