Support for doctest with hy.

[rduplain]

This gist has my investigation in all things hy + doctest: how to do it, limitations, an idea for hy.contrib.doctest, and a starting point for a py.test plugin to collect and run .hy doctests in a project.

A patch to hy could:

• Support the full Python doctest command-line program python -m hy.contrib.doctest FILE to run doctests in a specific module.
• Add a section to the docs on how to use doctest with hy.

I can put this together. I'm interested in reactions and/or alternative approaches.

[gilch]

What would it take to adapt doctest to use a Hy repl instead of the Python one? The main reason you put tests in docstrings is to show examples of intended use. If the examples are in a different language it kind of defeats the purpose. You might as well just use normal unit tests.

[rduplain]

The doctest module parses and runs examples, so it'd take re-implementing that.

The main reason you put tests in docstrings is to show examples of intended use.

+1

If the examples are in a different language it kind of defeats the purpose.

Not if you are calling your code from Python, not hy. It's still relevant to show Python-based examples.

[Kodiologist]

This would be really nice to have, so we could automatically check that all our documentation examples are correct as part of running the test suite. But I don't want it badly enough to put in the considerable effort that I suspect will be required. I'm going to leave the issue open in the hope that some kind soul will be interested someday.