Merge pull request #653 from nathanjmcdougall/dev/improve-pestpp-test-dx

Improve developer experience for running binaries from test suite

Author: briochh

.gitignore

@@ -66,6 +66,7 @@ pyemu/.idea
 
 autotest/*.bin
 autotest/*.dat
+autotest/pypestworker_*.txt
 autotest/temp
 autotest/.noseids
 autotest/temp*

README.md

@@ -111,7 +111,7 @@ Some notes that might be helpful for building your PR and testing:
 * As tests are run in parallel, where tests require read/write access to files it is safest to sandbox runs. 
 Pytest has a built-in fixture `tmp_path` that can help with this. 
 Setting optional argument `--basetemp` can be helpful for accessing the locally run files. 
-## Running test locally
+## Running tests locally
 To be able to make clean use of pytests fixture decorators etc., 
 it is recommended to run local tests through `pytest` (rather than use from script execution and commenting in 
 __main__ block). For e.g.:
@@ -127,6 +127,15 @@ with pytest-xdist, local runs can be parallelized:
 ### Run a specific test [`this_test()`]:
 > pytest --basetemp=runner autotest/testfile_tests.py::this_test
 
+### Test dependencies
+
+Python dependencies for the test suite can be installed via `pip install -e .[optional, test]` (they are recorded in [`./pyproject.toml`](./pyproject.toml)). You should also include binaries for various integrations:
+
+* [PEST++](https://github.com/usgs/pestpp/releases), e.g. `pestpp-ies`, `pestpp-mou`, etc. These can be automatically installed via the `get-pestpp` script included with pyEMU (see above).
+* [MODFLOW exectuables](https://github.com/MODFLOW-ORG/executables), i.e. `mf6`, `mfnwt`, `mfusg_gsi`. These can be automatically installed using flopy's [`get-modflow`](https://flopy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/md/get_modflow.html) command. 
+
+These should be placed in the relevant `./bin/win`, `./bin/linux`, or `./bin/mac` directories (depending on your OS).
+
 ### Using an IDE:
 Most modern, feature-rich editors and IDEs support launching pytest within debug or run consoles. 
 Some might need "encouraging" to recognise the non-standard test tags used in this library.