Skipping entire directory of unit tests in python

Question

I have the following directory structure for my unit tests.

top/
    test1/
    test2/
    test3/
    ...

Each test1 directory has an __init__.py that contains a class such as TestSomething that does the actual testing.

To temporarily disable these tests, I have to go through each __init__.py file and add the @unittest.skip decorator to the TestSomething classes.

http://docs.python.org/2/library/unittest.html#skipping-tests-and-expected-failures

As the number of tests has grown, this is becoming a tedious task because I have to go through each directory to disable the tests.

I am wondering if there's an easier way to disable all tests under a certain directory. For instance, is it possible to set something in top/__init__.py to turn off all tests in top?

Answer 1

It looks like unittest.skipIf(condition) from your linked page will do what you want.

Add unittest.skipIf(__skipThisDir__) to each test in a directory, as well as an import test_configuration at the top of the file.

Then add a "test_configuration.py" to each directory which contains

 __skipThisDir__ = False  #or True as needed