I don't know in which pymeasure issue this idea is buried. Therefor I store it here.

Ideas and notes about Adapter rework.

Phases

1. Adding tests for instruments
2. Reworking official adapters, Instrument class and adjust tests, documentation, and all instruments to these changes. (not here)
3. Add a Test Generator
4. Rework some adapters proper to some instruments and maybe some official adapters

Open questions

Adapter rework

General

• Include a test generator which generates tests out of device communication (code written)
• Test generator documentation
• add a BaseChannel with dynamic properties (initial code written)
• Instrument may ask in the setter instead of write only (initial code written)
• Make a SCPI Instrument?

Instruments and special adapters

Special Adapters move, if possible, to default adapters

• attocube and anc300 pymeasure#835
• danfysik and danfysik8500: should be removable, verify, that it works as expected.
• lakeshore: could be moved to pyvisa, I guess (code written)
• Oxford Adapter: move it to its own superclass between Instrument and the specific instrument itself.
• Toptica: move to instrument itself. (code already written. For new PR)
• Remove these instruments from the "test_all_instruments" exception for proper adapters.

Test special adapters change

• attocube
• danfysik
• lakeshore
• Oxford
• Toptica

Test Generator

• handle testing several times the same property/setter but with different values: keep the same name (what does pytest do?) or numerate them? Possibility to give a list of values to test for a parametrized test?
• handle the byte value b"\n" correctly

Instruments overhaul

• TC038D move to pymeasure properties (code written)

Clean up

Issues and discussions

• pymeasure#567 Main issue
• pymeasure#512 contains more connected issues
• pymeasure#409
• pymeasure#506 Regarding thread-safety and its difficulties. Questionable whether it should be included here
• pymeasure#219

As mentioned in pymeasure#752 I tried pymeasure/tests/generator.py with the HP3478A multimeter conencted by GPIB.
The file I used for creating the tests is TG_HP3478A.txt
the result file is test_hp3478a.txt
As is now with some lines commented-out works and pytest passes without issues.

Items noted:

1. the test-file is opened but not automatically written if following your example. to get it working in my spyder-IDE, I added the line 57 g.__del__() (The lines following are only to properly close the log)
2. test_method() does not work on calls with methods which does not return anything or only return a non-callable

• example 1 (method without return value): g.test_method("display_text", "ABCDEFGHIJKL") will trhow a LookupError:

  11:50:49 AM: Test method display_text. (generator, INFO)
  []
  [b'WRITE:B\n', b'READ:\xc5\x1f\x00\x00%\n']
  Traceback (most recent call last):
  
    File /usr/lib/python3.10/site-packages/spyder_kernels/py3compat.py:356 in compat_exec
      exec(code, globals, locals)
  
    File ~/builds/pymeasure/tests/TG_HP3478A.py:27
      g.test_method("display_text", "ABCDEFGHIJKL")
  
    File ~/builds/pymeasure/tests/generator.py:195 in test_method
      value = getattr(self.instr, method)(*args, **kwargs)
  
    File ~/builds/pymeasure/pymeasure/instruments/instrument.py:211 in __getattribute__
      return super().__getattribute__(name)
  
    File ~/builds/pymeasure/pymeasure/instruments/instrument.py:429 in fget
      raise LookupError("Instrument property can not be read.")
  
  LookupError: Instrument property can not be read.
  

• example 2 (method with non-callable return): g.test_method("measure_ACI")will throw the following TypeError:

  11:45:07 AM: Test method measure_ACI. (generator, INFO)
  11:45:07 AM: WRITE:F6 (Adapter, DEBUG)
  11:45:07 AM: GPIB.write b'F6\r\n' (pyvisa, DEBUG)
  11:45:07 AM: GPIB0::23::INSTR - reading 20480 bytes (last status <StatusCode.success_max_count_read: 1073676294>) (pyvisa, DEBUG)
  []
  [b'WRITE:B\n', b'READ:-\x1f\x00\x00%\n']
  11:45:10 AM: READ:+000.425E-3
   (Adapter, DEBUG)
  Traceback (most recent call last):
  
    File /usr/lib/python3.10/site-packages/spyder_kernels/py3compat.py:356 in compat_exec
      exec(code, globals, locals)
  
    File ~/builds/pymeasure/tests/TG_HP3478A.py:29
      g.test_method("measure_ACI")
  
    File ~/builds/pymeasure/tests/generator.py:195 in test_method
      value = getattr(self.instr, method)(*args, **kwargs)
  
  TypeError: 'float' object is not callable
  

• other methods (like hp3478a.reset(), .GPIB_trigger fail because of the use of calls to adapter.-methods (Corner case for non-SCPI instruments?)

3. Would it be possible and make sense to implement something like
   g.test_property_setter(bool_property, [True, False]) or
   g.test_property_setter(numerical_property, [0, 1, 2 .71, 3.14, 6.28, 23, 42] ?
   Or did I just overlook something and this is already possible?
4. flake8 has some feedback on test_hp3478a.py:

$ flake8 test_hp3478a.py 
test_hp3478a.py:26:41: E712 comparison to True should be 'if cond is True:' or 'if cond:'
test_hp3478a.py:34:40: E712 comparison to True should be 'if cond is True:' or 'if cond:'
test_hp3478a.py:45:1: F811 redefinition of unused 'test_auto_zero_enabled_setter' from line 37
test_hp3478a.py:58:42: E712 comparison to False should be 'if cond is False:' or 'if not cond:'
test_hp3478a.py:74:38: E711 comparison to None should be 'if cond is None:'

Good work and please let me know if you need further details or want me to try other things.

Agenda

• Improve (see below)
• write documentation

Ideas / issues

• handle testing several times the same property/setter but with different values: keep the same name (what does pytest do?) or numerate them? Possibility to give a list of values to test for a parametrized test?
• handle the byte value b"\n" correctly
• see #3