Intro

Makefile is a gnu utility that was aimed to simplify compilation process. You can forget long command with dozens of flags or params and with makefile u have targets and they can save your time while typing complicated command. If you familiar with bash aliases then it’s very similar concept. That helps a lot in day to day tasks. The command below would be easy as make tests

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tests:
  @pip install -r requirements/test-requirements.txt
  @py.test --junitxml=./testResults.xml --cov-config=.unit_coveragerc --cov-report xml --cov ./ test/

But in a large project this file can grow up to 1K lines of code which is hard to read and understand because of such reasons:

  • you should learn completely different syntax (that differs even from bash scripts you probably use too)
  • hard to understand for newcomers and some rules are really hard to remember
  • you cannot use it on different platforms like FreeBSD
  • you want to have same language across your projects, it’s more convenient

So, meet pyinvoke - a tool that helps you deal with issues above and can completely replace makefile. It’s very similar to the Ruby Rake one.
In typical python project you have a bunch of task you use from time to time - just use the decorator and write them as usual python functions.

What will you have out of the box:

  • namespacing
  • task aliasing
  • before/after hooks
  • parallel execution
  • flag-based style of command-line parsing
  • multiple tasks in single invocation

The tool is python 3 compatible and has no other dependencies. It’s definitely worth it to try this tool.

My slides from PyCon Poland 2016 Lightning talk

Resources