Fix error with unit test env caching

[sfc-gh-mwyatt]

We need to ensure we are still installing the latest checked out version of ArcticTraining even when using a cached environment.

[sfc-gh-sbekman]

there is a superior solution to this (besides installing the required packages). It's better to use it instead of dev install - because the latter is not atomic and can be forgotten as attested by this PR.

Instead I always add tests/conftest.py that has:

import sys
from pathlib import Path

# allow having multiple repository checkouts and not needing to remember to rerun
# 'pip install -e .[testing]' when switching between checkouts and running tests.
git_repo_path = str(Path(__file__).resolve().parents[1])
sys.path.insert(1, git_repo_path)

Voila, now pytest will always use the local checkout.

and all kinds of other amazing things can be added to it - those will come later once I start working on testing.

[sfc-gh-mwyatt]

there is a superior solution to this (besides installing the required packages). It's better to use it instead of dev install - because the latter is not atomic and can be forgotten as attested by this PR.

Instead I always add tests/conftest.py that has:

import sys
from pathlib import Path

# allow having multiple repository checkouts and not needing to remember to rerun
# 'pip install -e .[testing]' when switching between checkouts and running tests.
git_repo_path = str(Path(__file__).resolve().parents[1])
sys.path.insert(1, git_repo_path)

Voila, now pytest will always use the local checkout.

and all kinds of other amazing things can be added to it - those will come later once I start working on testing.

Is there a chance we could miss changes that cause error when running pip install? Otherwise, I think this is a nice solution!

[sfc-gh-sbekman]

Is there a chance we could miss changes that cause error when running pip install?

I'm not sure what you mean? The proposal is for the tests to always use the local checkout - you don't ever need to do pip install -e . before you run tests.

If you need to install some pre-requisite packages to run tests that's a completely different issue which isn't solved by this proposal.

In CI you have to do it anyway for other required packages, so you can just add testing to it.

The proposed change goes beyond CI needs.

[sfc-gh-sbekman]

Once you added my proposal the original proposal of this PR is no longer needed, because you have already installed all the prerequisites a few lines earlier.