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From: Aleksander Alekseev <aleksander@timescale.com>
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2024 15:19:05 +0300
Message-ID: <CAJ7c6TNGJYdaCwnEFk58smn-SoRAh8q6jkpiKCfHzKuLNUBrWQ@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: RFC: adding pytest as a supported test framework
To: Jacob Champion <jacob.champion@enterprisedb.com>
Cc: PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
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Hi Jacob,

> For the v18 cycle, I would like to try to get pytest [1] in as a
> supported test driver, in addition to the current offerings.
>
> (I'm tempted to end the email there.)

Huge +1 from me and many thanks for working on this.

Two cents from me.

I spent a fair part of my career writing in Perl. Personally I like
the language and often find it more convenient for the tasks I'm
working on than Python.

This being said, there were several projects I was involved in where
we had to choose a scripting language. In all the cases there was a
strong push-back against Perl and Python always seemed to be a common
denominator for everyone. So I ended up with the rule of thumb to use
Perl for projects I'm working on alone and Python otherwise. Although
the objective reality in the entire industry is unknown to me I spoke
to many people whose observations were similar.

We could speculate about the reasons why people seem to prefer Python
(good IDE support*, unique** libraries like Matplotlib / NumPy /
SciPy, ...) but honestly I don't think they are extremely relevant in
this discussion.

I believe supporting Python in our test infrastructure will attract
more contributors and thus would be a good step for the project in the
long run.

* including PyTest integration
** citation needed

-- 
Best regards,
Aleksander Alekseev