pandas.test() issue when run from a development instance of pandas

[clembou]

as described in #11913 (comment),
when using a development pandas instance, if pandas.test() is called while the working directory of the python interpreter is within the pandas repository, it fails to detect any tests, at least on windows:

[pandas_dev] C:\Users\jahfe_000\Documents\GitHub\pandas>python
Python 2.7.11 |Continuum Analytics, Inc.| (default, Jan 29 2016, 14:26:21) [MSC v.1500 64 bit (AMD64)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
Anaconda is brought to you by Continuum Analytics.
Please check out: http://continuum.io/thanks and https://anaconda.org
>>> import pandas
>>> pandas.test()
Running unit tests for pandas
pandas version 0.17.1+311.g70f79ce
numpy version 1.10.4
pandas is installed in pandas
Python version 2.7.11 |Continuum Analytics, Inc.| (default, Jan 29 2016, 14:26:21) [MSC v.1500 64 bit (AMD64)]
nose version 1.3.7

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 0 tests in 0.000s

OK
<nose.result.TextTestResult run=0 errors=0 failures=0>
>>>

if using python setup.py develop, a fix is to browse to a folder outside of the repo:

[pandas_dev] C:\Users\jahfe_000\Documents\GitHub\pandas>cd ..

[pandas_dev] C:\Users\jahfe_000\Documents\GitHub>python
Python 2.7.11 |Continuum Analytics, Inc.| (default, Jan 29 2016, 14:26:21) [MSC v.1500 64 bit (AMD64)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
Anaconda is brought to you by Continuum Analytics.
Please check out: http://continuum.io/thanks and https://anaconda.org
>>> import pandas
>>> pandas.test()
Running unit tests for pandas
pandas version 0.17.1+311.g70f79ce
numpy version 1.10.4
pandas is installed in c:\users\jahfe_000\documents\github\pandas\pandas
Python version 2.7.11 |Continuum Analytics, Inc.| (default, Jan 29 2016, 14:26:21) [MSC v.1500 64 bit (AMD64)]
nose version 1.3.7
C:\Anaconda\envs\pandas_dev\lib\site-packages\matplotlib\backends\qt_compat.py:84: ImportWarning: Not importing directory 'C:\Anaconda\envs\pandas_dev\sip': missing __init__.py
  import sip
....................................S..............S..............S..............S.................F.........................................................................................................................................................

This seems to be due to the fact that pandas.__file__ returns a relative path from the package root when accessed from a folder located within the package, and a relative path when accessed from any other directory.

[clembou]

Well, I tried to fix the problem but I am afraid I have to give up.

First of all, this is pretty hard to debug as I can't reproduce the problem in pycharm, only in the command line interpreter. By increasing the verbosity of the nose test runner pd.test(verbose=4) - This line needs to be modified to allow this - I came to the conclusion that the problem was coming from nose itself, most likely in nose/importer.py. This file uses __file__ and __path__ extensively and must be affected by the absolute/relative path problem.

Unfortunately I haven't managed to track the bug down fully. If someone has experience with nose and module imports they will probably figure this out!

[jreback]

pls reopen if this persists. I cannot reprod.