pytest-rhiza

The rhiza repository checks, installed as a pytest plugin instead of synced into every consumer repository as .rhiza/tests/.

Why

The seven modules the template syncs into .rhiza/tests/ are parameterised by exactly two things: the repository root, and SOURCE_FOLDER from .rhiza/.env. Nothing else about them varies per project. Distributing them by file copy costs every consumer repo:

• seven template-owned files in the tree, plus a conftest.py nobody may edit
• pythonpath = .rhiza/tests in pytest.ini, so the synced suite can import itself
• .rhiza/tests appended to make docs-coverage's interrogate paths, holding template code to the project's 100% docstring bar
• --with pytest-timeout --with python-dotenv --with packaging spelled out in the rhiza-test recipe, because a copied file carries no dependency metadata
• the template's own TestSkipFlag meta-tests re-running in every project, testing rhiza against itself

All five go away when the checks are a dependency. The dependency list is deliberately three small packages — folding them into rhiza would pull jinja2, typer, rich and loguru into every test environment, and into rhiza-tools would add pandas and plotly. It was four until #53 traded python-dotenv for ten lines of stdlib parsing: it bought one lookup on a rung that only repos still on rhiza v1.3 reach, and this package is installed in every rhiza-managed repo's test environment.

Install

uv add --dev pytest-rhiza

Or, the way a consumer's rhiza-test gate does it, without touching the project's dependencies:

uv run --with pytest-rhiza pytest --pyargs pytest_rhiza.checks.test_readme

How it is put together

Two halves, because pytest treats them differently.

The fixtures arrive through the pytest11 entry point and are available to any test in the session without a conftest.py:

The checks are tests, which an entry point cannot contribute, so they are named explicitly with --pyargs. One module per file the template used to sync, names unchanged:

That table is not prose. The fence below enumerates what the installed package actually ships, and the rhiza-test job in .github/workflows/ci.yml executes it against this README — so adding or removing a check without updating the list above turns that job red:

import pkgutil

import pytest_rhiza.checks as checks

for module in sorted(m.name for m in pkgutil.iter_modules(checks.__path__)):
    print(module)

test_cargo_toml
test_docstrings
test_go_module
test_pyproject
test_readme
test_readme_validation
test_release_tags

Which repository is "root"

The one deliberate behaviour change from the synced suite. .rhiza/tests/conftest.py resolved the root by counting directories up from __file__ — sound while the code lived in the repository, wrong once it is installed. Resolution is now:

1. --rhiza-root, when given
2. the directory holding the config file (pytest.ini, pyproject.toml, …)
3. the directory pytest was invoked from

Step 3 rather than config.rootpath on purpose: with no config file, pytest derives its rootdir from the arguments, and under --pyargs those are paths inside site-packages.

How a consumer selects and pins the checks

Selection is still resolved by which layers a project has, not by sniffing its manifest at runtime — so a misconfigured repo goes red instead of quietly skipping a check. What changed at rhiza v1.4 is where that resolution lives.

Until v1.3 each bundle shipped a make fragment and appended to a RHIZA_CHECKS accumulator (core's quality.mk seeded the two language-neutral checks; python-core, rust-core, go-core and tests each added += a line). That synced make layer is gone — no .rhiza/rhiza.mk, no .rhiza/make.d/, no fragments. A repo generates its front door once:

uvx rhiza-task shim > Makefile

make rhiza-test still works and is still what a stranger types, but the Makefile no longer contains the recipe: a %: catch-all forwards unmatched targets to the pinned CLI, and the check list is derived from the declared layer set.

Both settings live in [tool.rhiza-task] in the consumer's pyproject.toml:

[tool.rhiza-task]
# Which layers this project has. Declared rather than detected, for the same reason the
# accumulator was resolved at sync time: inference would let a misconfigured checkout
# quietly get a different check set instead of failing.
layers = ["python"]

# The pin. One number, so the checks and the template move together rather than drifting
# on two version axes.
pytest-rhiza = "pytest-rhiza @ git+https://github.com/Jebel-Quant/pytest-rhiza@<version>"

<version> is a placeholder, not a value to copy — and this README deliberately writes no literal there. Nothing in this repository bumps a number written in README.md (there is no [[tool.bumpversion.files]] entry for it) and until recently nothing read it either, so the pin sat at 0.1.0 for three releases (#17). tests/test_readme_pin.py is what notices now.

Doctest scope is the one setting the CLI does not pass

checks/test_docstrings.py takes its folders from the RHIZA_DOCTEST_FOLDERS environment variable, falling back to src. That variable is not set by rhiza-task — a consumer whose Python lives outside its source root exports it around the gate, which is what rhiza itself does:

RHIZA_DOCTEST_FOLDERS="$(uvx rhiza-task print source_folder)" uvx rhiza-task rhiza-test

Without it the check resolves src alone, and a project keeping its Python elsewhere has its examples silently unchecked — rhiza's own repo being the extreme case, with no src/ at all.

Two things that were decided

Both of these were open questions while the split was being designed. They are settled now, and the second went the opposite way to what was expected — which is the more useful half to record.

Version pinning: one number, and no literal in this file. The worry was that a separate distribution adds a second version axis to reason about. It does not, because the pin travels in the template: it is one setting a consumer's sync writes, so a repo on a given template release runs that release's assertions, exactly as file-copy delivery gave for free. The alternative considered — aligning this package's major.minor with template releases and pinning ~= — was not taken.

What did need deciding was where the number is written, and the answer is nowhere in this README. Nothing here bumps it and, until #17, nothing read it either, so the documented pin sat at 0.1.0 for three releases. The example uses a placeholder, and tests/test_readme_pin.py is what keeps a literal from creeping back.

Removing the old folder: not required, because a leftover is inert. The concern was that a consumer keeps .rhiza/tests/ on disk (a sync ceasing to deliver a file does not delete it) and that the copy would then run twice, so a migration would need an explicit removal step.

That was wrong, and for a reason worth knowing: the gate names modules, not paths. It resolves pytest_rhiza.checks.* out of site-packages, so it never looks at the folder — and pythonpath = .rhiza/tests, the one thing that used to make the folder importable, is itself one of the five costs above that the move removed. A leftover copy is unreachable rather than duplicated. rhiza-test warns while the folder is still present, and deleting it is tidying rather than a migration step.

Development

uv sync
uv run pytest

The gates, and where they are defined

There is no Makefile, and no .rhiza/ layer. .github/workflows/ci.yml defines every gate (#52), and each job is a single command with a comment saying why its threshold is what it is.

Running one by hand

# lint
uvx prek run --all-files --show-diff-on-failure
# typecheck
uv run --with ty ty check src
# docs-coverage
uv run --with interrogate interrogate -vv --fail-under 100 --ignore-init-method --ignore-magic src tests
# deptry
uvx deptry src
# security
uvx bandit -r src -ll -q
# audit
uvx pip-audit
# license
uv run --with pip-licenses pip-licenses --allow-only "MIT;MIT License;BSD-2-Clause;BSD-3-Clause;Apache-2.0;Apache-2.0 OR BSD-2-Clause;DFSG approved"
# test
uv run --group test pytest -ra --cov=src --cov-report=term-missing --cov-fail-under=90
# lowest-deps
uv sync --all-extras --all-groups --resolution lowest-direct
uv run --all-extras --all-groups --resolution lowest-direct pytest -ra
# rhiza-test
uv run --group test pytest -ra -rs --pyargs pytest_rhiza.checks.test_readme pytest_rhiza.checks.test_readme_validation pytest_rhiza.checks.test_pyproject pytest_rhiza.checks.test_docstrings pytest_rhiza.checks.test_release_tags

This is a copy, and ci.yml is still the definition. Until #58 the block above did not exist, on the #52 reasoning that a second home for a command line is a second thing to keep correct — the same argument that removed the Makefile. What that left was a repository where reproducing a red job meant opening a workflow file and reading YAML, which is a real cost paid by every contributor, including the ones who never write CI.

So the copy is allowed and pinned: tests/test_readme_gates.py asserts that every command above is the one its job actually runs, and that no CI gate is missing from the block. A threshold edited in ci.yml and not here fails the suite, which is what makes one of the two homes authoritative rather than merely first.

Two deliberate gaps. lowest-deps rewrites uv.lock's resolution in your working tree — run uv sync afterwards to get back. And rhiza-test's line stops at the pytest invocation: CI wraps it in a grep guard that fails the job if any check skips (#34), which is a property of the pipeline rather than of the gate.

weekly.yml carries the two that are too slow or noisy for every push: a fresh dependency resolution, and a link check over this file.

Day to day, uv sync then uv run pytest is the loop; uvx prek install wires the hooks so the formatting gate cannot surprise you.

Why no Makefile, and why nothing calls jebel-quant/rhiza

This repository used to run rhiza's reusable CI (rhiza_ci.yml) like any consumer, and mirrored a subset of its gates into a Makefile so a contributor could reproduce a red job. Both layers are gone, because the dependency direction made the first one a cycle: jebel-quant/rhiza pins pytest-rhiza as a dependency — its pyproject.toml carries pytest-rhiza @ git+…— so this repository calling rhiza's CI meant rhiza's workflow running the gates that judge the package rhiza depends on. Every other consumer gets a one-way edge; this one got a loop.

One rhiza workflow stays: rhiza_release.yml, synced verbatim, because PyPI Trusted Publishing validates the exact workflow path. The rhiza_codeql.yml and rhiza_scorecard.yml stubs are gone — they called rhiza's reusable CodeQL and OSSF Scorecard workflows, a pinned edge to keep current for scanning this repository does not depend on.

The cost of dropping the Makefile is real and worth stating: no gate has a local entry point any more (#49, #32). That was the call made in #52 — a Makefile in a repo whose ecosystem retired make as an interface is a second thing to keep correct — but it does mean the only way to run a gate by hand is to read its command line out of ci.yml.

The checks, self-applied

The checks run against this repository too — it is a Python project with a README, a pyproject.toml and a release config, so it is a valid subject for its own assertions. That is what the rhiza-test job is:

uv run --group test pytest -ra --pyargs pytest_rhiza.checks.test_readme

The job names the five modules this project is a subject for, and deliberately not test_cargo_toml or test_go_module: there is no Cargo.toml or go.mod here for them to judge, and a check with no subject skips, which reads as a pass (#34).

The five come to 34 assertions, and all 34 run — which is the part worth checking, because rhiza's own Rhiza repository checks job used to report 32 passed, 2 skipped: its checkout fetched no tags, so the two assertions comparing [project].version against the newest vX.Y.Z had nothing to compare and skipped. That is the one place where local was stronger than that job rather than weaker, and it is why the rhiza-test job checks out with fetch-depth: 0 and then fails if anything skipped at all (#34) — fetching tags fixes today's symptom, and the no-skip guard is what stops the failure mode returning through some other change.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.