Should we use mpremote or pyboard to test

[saraverbeecke]

Hello fellow MicroPython enthousiasts,
I'm trying to figure out what would be the best approach to do unittests or integration tests of MicroPython code while a hardware device is connected. Any insights are most welcome!

Using unittest and unittest-discover for MicroPython seems to work ok for simple code testing using stubs or mocking things related to the hardware. But is there a good way to for example use pytest (or the untittest) module of CPython and write tests that can also executes code on the connected board to validate a hardware test outcome?

• I know there is pyboard.py that is capable of executing code on a connected board as it is an importable module in CPython?
• Or should we use mpremote? This seems to be a command-line tool only so we would need to execute hardware stuff using mpremote running inside a CPython subprocess for this...

Do we know what the roadmap is for mpremote? Is this the one that will replace pyboard.py or will it be an importable module in the future... or do we just use pyboard.py for this?

Thanks!

[jimmo]

pyboard.py is a library for interacting with connected boards, as well as a rudimentary command line interface.
mpremote uses pyboard.py in order to provide a much more complete command line interface.

If you install mpremote from pip, you also get pyboard, so even if you just want to remote control your board from Python, you can make mpremote a project dependency and just use the pyboard module.

I do not recommend using mpremote via subprocess! Everything you need should be available from pyboard.py.

FWIW, I just sent a PR to add some additional functionality that might be useful when using pyboard.py as a library. #10286

[saraverbeecke]

@jimmo great work again! Thanks!

[ubidefeo]

@jimmo
could you please clarify the following?

If you install mpremote from pip, you also get pyboard

I have installed mpremote but if I enter a Python session and try to import pyboard I get ModuleNotFoundError.
Unfortunately pip install pyboard will install something which seems unsupported since 2019.

At the moment I manually brought pyboard.py from the MicroPython repo into a project, but it feels beyond wrong.
What's the solution to installing pyboard.py?

[Josverl]

from mpremote import pyboard should work

[jimmo]

Yes, what @Josverl said. Because mpremote internally uses pyboard.py it ships this module as part of the PyPI wheel.

However, in the next release of mpremote this will no longer be the case as we are developing a more comprehensive Python API for controlling devices. This will still be part of mpremote, but it will no longer be the pyboard module. In other words, the mpremote PyPI package will be both the command line tool and the Python scripting interface.

This is a bit of a WIP at the moment. I agree it's not great, but for now if you just want to use the pyboard module, copying it from the repo is probably the best option for now, and then in the future you can migrate your code to the new mpremote API.

[ubidefeo]

thanks @Josverl and @jimmo

the mpremote PyPI package will be both the command line tool and the Python scripting interface.

I like this a lot, and I love how lively MicroPython is.
At Arduino I'm pushing a lot to spread it, because I absolutely love it for my classes :)

u.