Another use case would be testing your package’s console scripts (although in this case it might be more convenient to use a package for creating command line interfaces that comes with built-in testing functionality, such as Click).The sh packageYou can run shell commands from Python using the subprocess module from the Python standard library..However, using this module is a hassle, because you have to do all the error handling yourself..Sh is a Python package that takes care of all that and allows you to run shell commands using a single line of code..If you want to run python setup.py install, all you have to do is:import shsh.python(['setup.py', 'install'])If you want to run foo and it is installed on your system, you can just do sh.foo().Writing a testSo how can we use this for testing?.Let’s look at an example..For the Python template, I want to test whether a project generated from the cookiecutter template can be installed without errors..The goal of the template is to help users write high quality code with less effort, and having an installable empty project is a good first step..The code for the test that tests the installation is:import pytestimport osimport shdef test_install(cookies): # generate a temporary project using the cookiecutter # cookies fixture project = cookies.bake() # remember the directory where tests should be run from cwd = os.getcwd() # change directories to the generated project directory # (the installation command must be run from here) os.chdir(str(project.project)) try: # run the shell command sh.python(['setup.py', 'install']) except sh.ErrorReturnCode as e: # print the error, so we know what went wrong print(e) # make sure the test fails pytest.fail(e) finally: # always change directories to the test directory os.chdir(cwd)That is all there is to it!More examplesOf course there is a lot more you can do, e.g., checking whether files exist after running a shell command, or verifying the contents of generated files..What use cases can you come up with?On Windows: use subprocessSh does not work on Windows..If you need to test shell commands on Windows, you are stuck with subprocess..Provenance tracking package recipy contains some nice examples of tests using subprocess that might help you on your way.. More details