Issue 18578: Rename and document test.bytecode_helper as test.support.bytecode_helper

test.bytecode_helper provides various utilities for sensibly testing bytecode generation. It isn't easy for CPython developers to discover, since it isn't documented and the file is mixed in with actual tests in the main test directory.

As discussed in #15494, it should be:

1. Moved from Lib/test/ to Lib/test/support (and imports in tests adjusted accordingly)
2. Documented in Doc/library/test.rst

This change only affects the default branch (since test.bytecode_helper is new in 3.4)

I am working on a patch.

I have a hard time figuring out what exactly BytecodeTestCase methods actually do. Thus the documentation is not probably accurate.

@seydou, would you be interested in making a GitHub pull request for your patch?

I wanted to merge the PR of Joannah but I have a question, are you sure that there is nobody using this module. Maybe we could add a warning when a user tries to use the module/function with a DeprecationWarning.

Could we have a wrapper raising the warning when we call it and redirect to the new function?

Thank you

Other discussion with Zach, and at the end, there is no problem to merge your PR.

Thank you for your contribution

New changeset 92777d5e5aed1753bafe07265dbe98b2d271815b by Stéphane Wirtel (Joannah Nanjekye) in branch 'master':
bpo-18578: Rename and document test.bytecode_helper as test.support.bytecode_helper (GH-15168)
https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/92777d5e5aed1753bafe07265dbe98b2d271815b

Just noting for the record that the reason a new warning wasn't needed here is because there is already a general "No compatibility guarantees" warning for the entire test package: https://docs.python.org/3/library/test.html

Thanks for getting this resolved!

messages: + msg326600
stage: needs patch