Hacktoberfest 2026: the issues maintainers tagged for October, open and beginner-friendly. Browse Hacktoberfest issues

The devguide should mention running Python tests from an installed installed instance

Open
#573 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Assessment

Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Newbie friendliness
48/100
Issue type
Documentation
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
python
Domain
documentation

Research direction

Start by locating the developer-guide section covering Python builds and tests, then compare it with the Makefile.pre.in install step and the documented test entry point. Add Unix-style instructions for configuring, building, installing, and running the test suite from the installed Python, including the relevant test options; the documentation is done when this workflow is clear and reproducible.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

topic-test type-feature

Most distributed versions of Python include or have an option to include install the Python test suite. This is included in the main Python Makefile (Makefile.pre.in) make install step. Unfortunately, test directories to be installed need to be explicitly added to the Makefile so it is easy to overlook such a change when only running tests from a development build directory. The devguide should show how to safely test install Python and run tests with it. For most Unixy ststems, that involves something like:

./configure --prefix=/tmp/py
make -j3
make install
/tmp/py/bin/python3 -m test -w -uall -j3 ...
Dominant language
Python
Stars
2.1k
Forks
1k
Avg merge
2d 12h
Merged PRs (30d)
12

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

More from python/devguide

All issues in python/devguide

Similar issues

More Python issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.