Consider adding environment variable when running

[nedbat]

Originally reported by Pedro Algarvio (Bitbucket: s0undt3ch, GitHub: s0undt3ch)

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When checking coverage using "coverage run" consider injecting a COVERAGE_ environment variable.

This would allow detecting that the code is being covered and proceed acroding to that information.

For example, to speed up tests I often just kill any subprocesses spawned instead of terminating them(yes we spawn a lot of processes and it does make a huge difference), however, this results in the coverage data not being written.

Should I provide a PR?

Maybe COVERAGE_COMMAND, which in this case would be set to run?

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• Bitbucket: https://bitbucket.org/ned/coveragepy/issue/553

[nedbat]

I think it would be better if you handle this on your own: however you are running coverage, you can define an environment variable of your own to affect your test running.

[nedbat]

Original comment by Pedro Algarvio (Bitbucket: s0undt3ch, GitHub: s0undt3ch)

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On our CI environment, I am handling this myself, however, if I want to run coverage locally, I need to add the variables every time.

For a single person team, doable, for huge teams(error prone), for third party contributors, even more error prone since some don't even read docs.

This would just be a convenience, a big convenience on our part.

If you, however, feel strongly against the procedure, feel free to close the issue.

[nedbat]

Original comment by Pedro Algarvio (Bitbucket: s0undt3ch, GitHub: s0undt3ch)

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I'm using pytest, and even though pytest-cov exists, it misses whatever is imported on the main conftest.py prior to starting, hence me running "coverage run" instead...

[nedbat]

Tell me more about your environment. You don't have a Makefile or a tox.ini that controls the launching of the test runner?

[nedbat]

Original comment by Pedro Algarvio (Bitbucket: s0undt3ch, GitHub: s0undt3ch)

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No tox.ini, we target a specific python version and the test environment is built as part of the CI process, sobno need to bring in tox
And no Makefile either, its a direct py.test call.

Perhaps a more meaningful environment variable. The path to the used configuration file?! If found and not already present in the environment?

I'm guessing I might be pushing too much but I can't even inspect sys.argv since coverage does the right thing and clears its tracks from it.

[nedbat]

This is now implemented in #1246, commit 99cf3cb