Can Python's unittest test in parallel, like nose can?

Python unittest's builtin testrunner does not run tests in parallel. It probably wouldn't be too hard write one that did. I've written my own just to reformat the output and time each test. That took maybe 1/2 a day. I think you can swap out the TestSuite class that is used with a derived one that uses multiprocess without much trouble.

The testtools package is an extension of unittest which supports running tests concurrently. It can be used with your old test classes that inherit unittest.TestCase.

For example:

import unittest
import testtools

class MyTester(unittest.TestCase):
    # Tests...

suite = unittest.TestLoader().loadTestsFromTestCase(MyTester)
concurrent_suite = testtools.ConcurrentStreamTestSuite(lambda: ((case, None) for case in suite))
concurrent_suite.run(testtools.StreamResult())

Please use pytest-xdist, if you want parallel run.

The pytest-xdist plugin extends py.test with some unique test execution modes:

• test run parallelization: if you have multiple CPUs or hosts you can use those for a combined test run. This allows to speed up development or to use special resources of remote machines.

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More info: Rohan Dunham's blog