You can set the norecursedirs option in an ini-file, for example your setup.cfg in the project root directory:
# content of setup.cfg
[pytest]
norecursedirs = .svn _build tmp*
This would tell py.test to not recurse into typical subversion or sphinx-build directories or into any tmp prefixed directory.
You can configure different naming conventions by setting the python_files, python_classes and python_functions configuration options. Example:
# content of setup.cfg
# can also be defined in in tox.ini or pytest.ini file
[pytest]
python_files=check_*.py
python_classes=Check
python_functions=check
This would make py.test look for check_ prefixes in Python filenames, Check prefixes in classes and check prefixes in functions and classes. For example, if we have:
# content of check_myapp.py
class CheckMyApp:
def check_simple(self):
pass
def check_complex(self):
pass
then the test collection looks like this:
$ py.test --collectonly
=========================== test session starts ============================
platform darwin -- Python 2.7.1 -- pytest-2.2.2
collecting ... collected 2 items
<Module 'check_myapp.py'>
<Class 'CheckMyApp'>
<Instance '()'>
<Function 'check_simple'>
<Function 'check_complex'>
============================= in 0.01 seconds =============================
You can use the --pyargs option to make py.test try interpreting arguments as python package names, deriving their file system path and then running the test. For example if you have unittest2 installed you can type:
py.test --pyargs unittest2.test.test_skipping -q
which would run the respective test module. Like with other options, through an ini-file and the addopts option you can make this change more permanently:
# content of pytest.ini
[pytest]
addopts = --pyargs
Now a simple invocation of py.test NAME will check if NAME exists as an importable package/module and otherwise treat it as a filesystem path.
You can always peek at the collection tree without running tests like this:
. $ py.test --collectonly pythoncollection.py
=========================== test session starts ============================
platform darwin -- Python 2.7.1 -- pytest-2.2.2
collecting ... collected 3 items
<Module 'pythoncollection.py'>
<Function 'test_function'>
<Class 'TestClass'>
<Instance '()'>
<Function 'test_method'>
<Function 'test_anothermethod'>
============================= in 0.01 seconds =============================