This is for contributors who want to make changes and test for all different versions of python currently supported. If you don't want to set up and install all the different python versions locally (and there are some difficulties with that) you can just run them in docker using containers.

To build a container say for Python 3.11, change to the root directory of the project and run:

(export PY=3.11 && docker build --build-arg PY="$PY" --build-arg TOXPY="$(sed 's/\.//' <<< "$PY")" -t pactfoundation:python${PY} -f docker/Dockerfile .)

This uses an Alpine based image (currently 3.17), which is available as of 2023-04 for Python versions 3.7 - 3.11.

Note: To run tox, the Python version without the '.' is required, i.e. '311' instead of '3.11', so some manipulation with sed is used to remove the '.'

To build for Python versions which require a different Alpine image, such as if trying to build against Python 3.6, an extra ALPINE arg can be provided:

(export PY=3.6 && docker build --build-arg PY="$PY" --build-arg TOXPY="$(sed 's/\.//' <<< "$PY")" --build-arg ALPINE=3.15 -t pactfoundation:python${PY} -f docker/Dockerfile .)

To then run the tests and exit:

docker run -it --rm -v "$(pwd)":/home pactfoundation:python3.11

If you need to debug you can change the command to:

docker run -it --rm -v "$(pwd)":/home pactfoundation:python3.11 sh

This will open a container with a prompt. From the /home location in the container you can run the same tests manually:

tox -e py311-{test,install}

In all the above if you need to run a different version change py311/python3.11 where appropriate. Or you can run the convenience script to build:

docker/build.sh 3.11

where 3.11 is the python environment version.