Implement tox

[KasukabeDefenceForce]

📝 Description

Type: 🚀 feature
The PR aims at implementing tox for automated testing across various Python versions and environments.

📌 Resources

Examples, notebooks, and links to useful references.

🚦 Testing

How did you test these changes?

• Testing pipeline
• Other method (describe)
• My changes can't be tested (explain why)

☑️ Checklist

• I requested two reviewers for this pull request
• I updated the documentation according to my changes
• I built the documentation by applying the build_docs label

Note: If you are not allowed to perform any of these actions, ping (@) a contributor.

[KasukabeDefenceForce]

For running tests on all the mentioned environments use the command:
tox
For running tests on specific environment use the command:
tox -e {env}-test

For example:
tox -e py38-test

[andrewfullard]

You said in Slack that the main benefit is testing against multiple Python versions. With our static environment, I am not sure that applies to TARDIS. What other benefits does tox provide?

[KasukabeDefenceForce]

You said in Slack that the main benefit is testing against multiple Python versions. With our static environment, I am not sure that applies to TARDIS. What other benefits does tox provide?

Some other benefits:

1. We can simplify the test command. For example, instead of running pytest tardis --tardis-refdata=/Users/abhinav/workspace/code/tardis-main/tardis-refdata --tardis-regression-data=/Users/abhinav/workspace/code/tardis-main/tardis-regression-data we can just run tox.
2. Tox creates separate virtual environments for each test, preventing dependency conflicts and ensuring consistent test conditions. For example, if a user has installed some extra dependencies locally, it wont affect the test environment.

Resources:
https://blog.ionelmc.ro/2015/04/14/tox-tricks-and-patterns/
https://codilime.com/blog/python-tox/
https://christophergs.com/python/2020/04/12/python-tox-why-use-it-and-tutorial/

[andrewfullard]

Can tox implement single-command testing for all of the not (continuum or rpacket_tracking), continuum, and rpacket_tracking test cases?

[wkerzendorf]

is this done? @atharva-2001 told me that we don't want to use it.

[KasukabeDefenceForce]

Can tox implement single-command testing for all of the not (continuum or rpacket_tracking), continuum, and rpacket_tracking test cases?

Yes we can.

[KasukabeDefenceForce]

is this done? @atharva-2001 told me that we don't want to use it.

Yep, its not worth it in our case.