I have a (python3) package that has completely different behaviour depending on how it's init()ed (perhaps not the best design, but rewriting is not an option). The module can only be init()ed once, a second time gives an error. I want to test this package (both behaviours) using py.test.
Note: the nature of the package makes the two behaviours mutually exclusive, there is no possible reason to ever want both in a singular program.
I have serveral test_xxx.py modules in my test directory. Each module will init the package in the way in needs (using fixtures). Since py.test starts the python interpreter once, running all test-modules in one py.test run fails.
Monkey-patching the package to allow a second init() is not something I want to do, since there is internal caching etc that might result in unexplained behaviour.

Is it possible to tell py.test to run each test module in a separate python process (thereby not being influenced by inits in another test-module)
Is there a way to reliably reload a package (including all sub-dependencies, etc)?
Is there another solution (I'm thinking of importing and then unimporting the package in a fixture, but this seems excessive)?
I have the same problem, and found three solutions:

reload(some_lib) 
patch SUT, as the imported method is a key and value in SUT, you can patch the
SUT. Example, if you use f2 of m2 in m1, you can patch m1.f2 instead of m2.f2
import module, and use module.function.
restart python (or reload modules) in py.test tests