Allow pytest to be invoked as a module

This is basically a duplicate of #7207, but with different rationale. pytest have the options to be invoked as plain pytest and python -m pytest. The difference between these two is that the latter adds the current directory to sys.path. So, let’s say I have a project with layout like this:

├── module_foo
│   └──  __init__.py
├── common
│   └── __init__.py
├── requirements.txt
├── tests
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── test_common
│   │   └── test_stuff.py
│   └── conftest.py

If I write in conftest.py something like this:

import common

VS Code test runner will fail because it would not be able to import my code. But, if I invoke it as a module, because of sys.path everything will just work.

So, I am asking to give an option to run pytest as module, or option to prepend working directory to PYTHONPATH variable.

[brettcannon]

Thank you to everyone who upvoted this issue! Since the community showed interest in this feature request we will leave this issue open as something to consider implementing at some point in the future.

We do encourage people to continue 👍 the first/opening comment as it helps us prioritize our work based on what the community seems to want the most.

[hoylemd]

I’ve just switched over to VSCode from vim, and this would be a huge help for me and my team.

Our project is set up such that tests directory is just inside the project directory, alongside all the app source directories (lib, utils, etc. no all-encompassing src directory). We used to do some gross gymnastics with setting pythonpath to the project directory in the app code to make sure we could import all of the local modules from the other ones (including for tests), but we were able to completely remove that by mandating that every python command we run is run as a module (i.e. python -m pytest).

I was able to get our test suite working with the vscode plugin by making a .env file in the project root (beside pytest.ini) that just contains

PYTHONPATH=.

but that feels like a bad way to handle this. I’d much prefer an actual setting for it.