add a hook for serializing/unserializing report sections

[pytestbot]

Originally reported by: Ronny Pfannschmidt (BitBucket: RonnyPfannschmidt, GitHub: RonnyPfannschmidt)

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that way we can have more easy serialization of things like
tracebacks, detailed log reports and the like

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• Bitbucket: https://bitbucket.org/pytest-dev/pytest/issue/111

[pytestbot]

Original comment by holger krekel (BitBucket: hpk42, GitHub: hpk42):

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Not sure i get it - you can already put arbitrary objects on reports which will be serialized/deserialized.

[pytestbot]

Original comment by Ronny Pfannschmidt (BitBucket: RonnyPfannschmidt, GitHub: RonnyPfannschmidt):

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but that only covers execnet serializable stuff and things with a crude string conversation
anything more complex is left out

[nicoddemus]

@RonnyPfannschmidt, can you elaborate on this a bit? 😄

[RonnyPfannschmidt]

currently we have a very crude serialization/deserialization of test report sections, covering only things that execnet can handle

in order to make report serialization/replay more usefull and more approachable we need a hook for dealing with those

[nicoddemus]

You mean a hook that would receive an object and return a serializable object (for example a dict containing only basic types)?

This idea would allow #133 to be implemented as a plugin, I think.

[RonnyPfannschmidt]

yes

[The-Compiler]

This would be a nice feature, but shouldn't block 3.0. Since it's already over 4.5 years old, I'm removing the milestone entirely.

[nicoddemus]

Fixed in #4965