Nosetests: Capturing log messages written to stderr

This is a tip for using the Python logging module in conjunction with unit-tests.
When using the root logger to write debug messages, e.g.

 import logging
..
logging.debug('x = %s' % x)

to capture the messages and write them to the console when running nosetests, pass ‘root’ to the –log-debug nosetests option. E.g.

nosetests test_module1.py -s --log-debug=root