Doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
or Tester(). The more likely case is that the silent failure was
unintended and that the user needed to be informed so the test could be
fixed.
diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index 9b9b567..ddf76ff 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -38,6 +38,15 @@
Library
-------
+- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
+ skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
+ naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
+ user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
+ break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
+ failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
+ is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
+ or Tester().
+
- Closing a dumbdbm database more than once is now harmless (it used to
raise a nuisance exception on the second close).