Dependiences between tests in nosetests/unittest in Python

Question

I would like to introduce dependencies between my unit tests. My very first test determines if the rest of tests should be performed.

I'm aware of the existence of the @unittest decorator with its conditional skipping method skipIf. Therefore, my solution can be as easy as introducing a field responsible for keeping information about the first unit test status. With this information, I can decorate remaining unit tests and skip them if the first unit test failed.

However, I feel that this is not the best approach. If you consider more dependencies, then it appears that it is required to maintain a whole structure to keep required information.

I was looking for a built-in feature but I was unable to find anything better.

Update
To make it as clear as possible: I'm looking for the functionality similar to the @depends annotation in the PHPUnit. For example, the following code creates dependency between the firstTest a the secondTest:

/**
 * @depends firstTest
 */
public function secondTest()
{
    // test body
}

In the above example, the secondTest is going to be performed if and only if the firstTest passed.

Answer 1

Well, This SO thread kind of deals with the same question and what it says is kind of true that if it is a real unit test and if your code is well structured then you should not need (in other words : it should not be the case) that one test depends on another.

However, if you absolutely need it and if there is a real solid reason for that, you may look into Proboscis. Seems like it may have (via grouping the tests) something near to what you want.