TST: add some string kw options to simplify switching NoseTester behavior.

2 files changed, 23 insertions, 17 deletions

diff --git a/doc/HOWTO_RELEASE.rst.txt b/doc/HOWTO_RELEASE.rst.txt
index d0b16a9c2..50b82ac8b 100644
--- a/doc/HOWTO_RELEASE.rst.txt
+++ b/doc/HOWTO_RELEASE.rst.txt
@@ -195,8 +195,7 @@ version this is not desired.  Therefore any known warnings should be solved or
 explicitly silenced before making the release branch, then when the branch is
 made, the default behavior should be switched to not raise errors.  This is
 done in the constructor of the NoseTester class in numpy/testing/nosetester.py,
-by replacing ``raise_warnings=(DeprecationWarning, RuntimeWarning)`` with 
-``raise_warnings=()``.
+by replacing ``raise_warnings="develop"`` with ``raise_warnings="release"``.
 
 Make sure current trunk builds a package correctly
 --------------------------------------------------
diff --git a/numpy/testing/nosetester.py b/numpy/testing/nosetester.py
index 9041ff69d..7dfc9cf03 100644
--- a/numpy/testing/nosetester.py
+++ b/numpy/testing/nosetester.py
@@ -108,18 +108,22 @@ class NoseTester(object):
         The package to test. If a string, this should be the full path to
         the package. If None (default), `package` is set to the module from
         which `NoseTester` is initialized.
-    raise_warnings : sequence of warnings, optional
+    raise_warnings : str or sequence of warnings, optional
         This specifies which warnings to configure as 'raise' instead
-        of 'warn' during the test execution. To disable this feature,
-        pass an empty tuple.  See Notes for more details.
+        of 'warn' during the test execution.  Valid strings are:
+
+          - "develop" : equals ``(DeprecationWarning, RuntimeWarning)``
+          - "release" : equals ``()``, don't raise on any warnings.
+
+        See Notes for more details.
 
     Notes
     -----
     The default for `raise_warnings` is ``(DeprecationWarning, RuntimeWarning)``
-    for the master branch of NumPy, and ``()`` for released versions.  The
-    purpose of this switching behavior is to catch as many warnings as possible
-    during development, but not give problems for packaging of released
-    versions.
+    for the master branch of NumPy, and ``()`` for maintenance branches and
+    released versions.  The purpose of this switching behavior is to catch as
+    many warnings as possible during development, but not give problems for
+    packaging of released versions.
 
     """
     # Stuff to exclude from tests. These are from numpy.distutils
@@ -129,8 +133,7 @@ class NoseTester(object):
                 'pyrex_ext',
                 'swig_ext']
 
-    def __init__(self, package=None,
-                 raise_warnings=(DeprecationWarning, RuntimeWarning)):
+    def __init__(self, package=None, raise_warnings="develop"):
         package_name = None
         if package is None:
             f = sys._getframe(1)
@@ -287,13 +290,12 @@ class NoseTester(object):
             If True, report coverage of NumPy code. Default is False.
             (This requires the `coverage module:
              <http://nedbatchelder.com/code/modules/coverage.html>`_).
-        raise_warnings : sequence of warnings, optional
+        raise_warnings : str or sequence of warnings, optional
             This specifies which warnings to configure as 'raise' instead
-            of 'warn' during the test execution. To disable this feature,
-            pass an empty sequence.
-            The default (None) is determined by the `NoseTester` constructor.
-            For NumPy it is set to ``(DeprecationWarning, RuntimeWarning)``
-            during development, and to ``()`` for released versions.
+            of 'warn' during the test execution.  Valid strings are:
+
+              - "develop" : equals ``(DeprecationWarning, RuntimeWarning)``
+              - "release" : equals ``()``, don't raise on any warnings.
 
         Returns
         -------
@@ -343,6 +345,11 @@ class NoseTester(object):
         if raise_warnings is None:
             raise_warnings = self.raise_warnings
 
+        _warn_opts = dict(develop=(DeprecationWarning, RuntimeWarning),
+                          release=())
+        if raise_warnings in _warn_opts.keys():
+            raise_warnings = _warn_opts[raise_warnings]
+
         # Preserve the state of the warning filters
         warn_ctx = numpy.testing.utils.WarningManager()
         warn_ctx.__enter__()