The command to run the unit tests doesn't work on windows

[Baptiste Mispelon]

In the contributing guide [1], the command given to run the test suite is the following:

$ git clone https://github.com/django/django.git django-repo
$ cd django-repo/tests
$ PYTHONPATH=..:$PYTHONPATH ./runtests.py

The first two instructions work fine on windows as far as I know but the first one won't because windows doesn't support setting environment variables this way.

[1] ​https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.7/internals/contributing/writing-code/unit-tests/#quickstart

[Tim Graham]

I use "Git Bash" on Windows instead of tcmd.exe and the command above works fine. Maybe we should recommend something like that?

[Aymeric Augustin]

Yes, in my experience Git Bash is the least unusable option on Windows.

[Joeri Bekker]

The Windows (near) equivalent is to use with cmd.exe:

$ git clone https://github.com/django/django.git django-repo
$ cd django-repo\tests
$ set PYTHONPATH=..;%PYTHONPATH%
$ python runtests.py

The third line extends your PYTHONPATH with the parent directory for the duration of the terminal session.
I added the python command in line 4, to use the one that is set in the PATH rather than the one registered with Windows.

In my opinion the documentation doesn't need to have a Windows equivalent of common bash commands.

[Andreas Savvides]

Here is a link to my patch: ​https://github.com/django/django/pull/4371

[Tim Graham <timograham@…>]

In 118cae2:

Fixed #23666 -- Recommended Git Bash for running unit tests on Windows.