I have a large python project that takes about 4 seconds to require all the necessary files before anything actually happens. This is not too bad when running most scripts in this project, because they are run infrequently and it doesn't matter if there is a slow start up.
However, it's a real inconvenience for testing and doing TDD, because just to run one test, it takes a minimum of 4 seconds, even if the test itself runs in 1ms, because so much code must load first.
Ruby / Rails has numerous projects to reduce start up time of tests and other common actions, such as the zeus, spork, spring and commands libraries.
Are there any equivalent projects for python? I found roadrunner, but it hasn't been updated in 6 years and is plone specific. The old pyunit looks like it did something like this with it's GUI, however it's also out of date I'd love something that worked easily in a remote terminal. Reimport is a small library that might be helpful, and here is a gist of an attempt at a module watcher.
It seems such a project is not at all simple due to having to deal with import dependencies.
I hope this question is appropriate for SO, if not, please direct me to the appropriate SE site to post on.
In case it matters, I'm currently using nose to run my tests.
Thanks in advance for any help.