If I have understood correctly, you don't know how to create the test database first time (in order to reuse it later).
NoseTestSuiteRunner should create it automatically if DB does not exist even if you set REUSE_DB = 0. If you want to create test DB manually you can create the following file:
test_db_settings.py
in which you specify:
from settings import *
DATABASES = {
'default': {
'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2',
# TestRunner uses a database with name that consists
# of prefix test_ and your database name if your database
# name is db then the test database name has to be test_db
'NAME': 'test_db',
'USER': 'postgres_user',
'PASSWORD': 'postgres_user',
'HOST': 'localhost',
'PORT': '5432',
}
}
after that create test_db:
createdb -U postgres_user -h localhost test_db # if you use postgres
python manage.py syncdb --settings test_db_settings.py
python manage.py migrate --settings test_db_settings.py (only if you use South)
Now we have DB that is used by TestRunner. We may run test:
REUSE_DB=1 python manage.py test
Updated
Are you sure that you use NoseTestSuiteRunner? Here is some code from django_nose.NoseTestSuiteRunner. As we can see if option REUSE_DB is set then teardown_database is disabled. If you want you can debug it for example set here a breakpoint to check you really use its Runner etc.
def teardown_databases(self, *args, **kwargs):
"""Leave those poor, reusable databases alone if REUSE_DB is true."""
if not _reusing_db():
return super(NoseTestSuiteRunner, self).teardown_databases(
*args, **kwargs)
# else skip tearing down the DB so we can reuse it next time