time-machine example test for a segfault in Python

time-machine example test for a segfault in Python

Here's a really neat testing trick by Adam Johnson. Someone reported a segfault bug in his time-machine library. How you you write a unit test that exercises a segfault without crashing the entire test suite?

Adam's solution is a test that does this:

subprocess.run([sys.executable, "-c", code_that_crashes_python], check=True)

sys.executable is the path to the current Python executable - ensuring the code will run in the same virtual environment as the test suite itself. …

adam example library machine python solution test testing trick