Most of the tests require a local Rietveld server. To set this up: Method 1: Let the presubmit script do the work for you. $ git cl presubmit Method 2: Manual. 1) Check out a copy of Rietveld: $ svn checkout http://rietveld.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ rietveld (Use git-svn if you must, but man is it slow.) 2) Get the Google App Engine SDK: http://code.google.com/appengine/downloads.html 3) To run Rietveld you will need Django 1.0, which is not included with the App Engine SDK. Go to http://www.djangoproject.com/download , download a Django from the 1.0 series (it's in the sidebar on the right), untar it, then $ export PYTHONPATH=`pwd`/Django-1.0.4 4) Run Rietveld: $ /path/to/appengine/sdk/dev_appserver.py /path/to/rietveld (If using one of the App Engine launchers, be sure to use port 8080 for this project.) And then, finally, run the tests.