Code in context manager from one py test file affects another test file

Asked Jan 28 '21 at 18:50

Active Jan 28 '21 at 19:14

Viewed 134 times

I have test_a.py and test_b.py files. In test_a.py file I have context manager with patch.dict like below:

with patch.dict("os.environ", {"AWS_REGION": "us-east-1"}):
    code...

In test_b.py file I have AWS_REGION = os.environ["AWS_REGION"] .

The problem: when I commented out the context manager in test_a.py file, the test_b.py file failed because os.environ doesn't have "AWS_REGION" .

My question:

Why are the two files interdependent?
Acknowledging that they're interdependent, why the patch.dict that only applies in the context manager will have an effect on test_b.py file?

edited Jan 28 '21 at 19:14

asked Jan 28 '21 at 18:50

Gang Fang

Are you running `test_b.py` inside the context manager? – Barmar Jan 28 '21 at 18:53
@Barmar thanks for the response. Nope I was not. – Gang Fang Jan 28 '21 at 18:57
Are they in different threads of the same Python process? The environment is a global attribute of the process. – Barmar Jan 28 '21 at 18:58
No I don't think so. I am using pytest to run those tests. – Gang Fang Jan 28 '21 at 19:14
Can you then try another variant to mock environment variables please? https://stackoverflow.com/a/52211725/12000849 – dukkee Jan 28 '21 at 19:16
@dukkee Thanks for the suggestion. That should work but I am curious what is happening out here. – Gang Fang Jan 28 '21 at 19:19

0 Answers0