Problems using nose in a virtualenv
Question:
I am unable to use nose (nosetests) in a virtualenv project – it can’t seem to find the packages installed in the virtualenv environment.
The odd thing is that i can set
test_suite = 'nose.collector'
in setup.py and run the tests just fine as
python setup.py test
but when running nosetests straight, there are all sorts of import errors.
I’ve tried it with both a system-wide installation of nose and a virtualenv nose package and no luck.
Any thoughts?
Thanks!!
Answers:
Are you able to run myenv/bin/python /usr/bin/nosetests? That should run Nose using the virtual environment’s library set.
Here’s what works for me:
$ virtualenv --no-site-packages env1
$ cd env1
$ source bin/activate # makes "env1" environment active,
# you will notice that the command prompt
# now has the environment name in it.
(env1)$ easy_install nose # install nose package into "env1"
I created a really basic package slither that had, in its setup.py, same test_suite attribute as you mentioned above. Then I placed the package source under env1/src.
If you looked inside env1/src, you’d see:
slither/setup.py
slither/slither/__init__.py
slither/slither/impl.py # has some very silly code to be tested
slither/slither/tests.py # has test-cases
I can run the tests using test subcommand:
(env1)$ pushd src/slither
(env1)$ python setup.py test
# ... output elided ...
test_ctor (slither.tests.SnakeTests) ... ok
test_division_by_zero (slither.tests.SnakeTests) ... ok
Ran 2 tests in 0.009s
OK
(env1)$ popd
Or, I can run the same tests with nosetests:
(env1)$ pushd src
(env1)$ nosetests slither/
..
Ran 2 tests in 0.007s
OK
(env1)$ popd
Also note that nosetests can be picky about executables. You can pass --exe if you want it to discover tests in python modules that are executable.
I got a similar problem. The following workaround helped:
python `which nosetests`
(instead of just nosestests)
You need to have a copy of nose installed in the virtual environment. In order to force installation of nose into the virtualenv, even though it is already installed in the global site-packages, run pip install with the -I flag:
(env1)$ pip install nose -I
From then on you can just run nosetests as usual.
Perhaps this is a recent change, but for me, when I installed nosetests through pip, there was a nosetests executable installed in .virtualenvs/<env>/bin, which (unsurprisingly) operates correctly with the virtualenv.
You might have a nosetests that is installed somewhere else in your PATH with higher priority than the one installed in your virtualenv. A quick way to give the nose module and associated nosetests script installed in your current virtualenv top priority is to edit your PATH:
export PATH=/path/to/current/virtualenv/bin:$PATH
In the same situation I needed to reload the virtualenv for the path to be correctly updated:
deactivate
env/bin/activate
If all else fails, try installing nose in your venv, and/or run nosetests-2.7. I believe @andrea-zonca’s answer has the same effect if your venv python is 2.7
Late to the party.
Regardless, if you see this in the year 2021…
These issues, for me, surrounding nose, nose-cov and pinocchio were resolved by updating my Virtual Envs to at least Python 3.8.2..
I am unable to use nose (nosetests) in a virtualenv project – it can’t seem to find the packages installed in the virtualenv environment.
The odd thing is that i can set
test_suite = 'nose.collector'
in setup.py and run the tests just fine as
python setup.py test
but when running nosetests straight, there are all sorts of import errors.
I’ve tried it with both a system-wide installation of nose and a virtualenv nose package and no luck.
Any thoughts?
Thanks!!
Are you able to run myenv/bin/python /usr/bin/nosetests? That should run Nose using the virtual environment’s library set.
Here’s what works for me:
$ virtualenv --no-site-packages env1
$ cd env1
$ source bin/activate # makes "env1" environment active,
# you will notice that the command prompt
# now has the environment name in it.
(env1)$ easy_install nose # install nose package into "env1"
I created a really basic package slither that had, in its setup.py, same test_suite attribute as you mentioned above. Then I placed the package source under env1/src.
If you looked inside env1/src, you’d see:
slither/setup.py
slither/slither/__init__.py
slither/slither/impl.py # has some very silly code to be tested
slither/slither/tests.py # has test-cases
I can run the tests using test subcommand:
(env1)$ pushd src/slither
(env1)$ python setup.py test
# ... output elided ...
test_ctor (slither.tests.SnakeTests) ... ok
test_division_by_zero (slither.tests.SnakeTests) ... ok
Ran 2 tests in 0.009s
OK
(env1)$ popd
Or, I can run the same tests with nosetests:
(env1)$ pushd src
(env1)$ nosetests slither/
..
Ran 2 tests in 0.007s
OK
(env1)$ popd
Also note that nosetests can be picky about executables. You can pass --exe if you want it to discover tests in python modules that are executable.
I got a similar problem. The following workaround helped:
python `which nosetests`
(instead of just nosestests)
You need to have a copy of nose installed in the virtual environment. In order to force installation of nose into the virtualenv, even though it is already installed in the global site-packages, run pip install with the -I flag:
(env1)$ pip install nose -I
From then on you can just run nosetests as usual.
Perhaps this is a recent change, but for me, when I installed nosetests through pip, there was a nosetests executable installed in .virtualenvs/<env>/bin, which (unsurprisingly) operates correctly with the virtualenv.
You might have a nosetests that is installed somewhere else in your PATH with higher priority than the one installed in your virtualenv. A quick way to give the nose module and associated nosetests script installed in your current virtualenv top priority is to edit your PATH:
export PATH=/path/to/current/virtualenv/bin:$PATH
In the same situation I needed to reload the virtualenv for the path to be correctly updated:
deactivate
env/bin/activate
If all else fails, try installing nose in your venv, and/or run nosetests-2.7. I believe @andrea-zonca’s answer has the same effect if your venv python is 2.7
Late to the party.
Regardless, if you see this in the year 2021…
These issues, for me, surrounding nose, nose-cov and pinocchio were resolved by updating my Virtual Envs to at least Python 3.8.2..