beb 0.2.0

Build Blender extension archives from JSON or YAML manifests

Blender Extension Builder

Blender Extension Builder packages Blender extensions from a repository manifest.

Source repository: https://github.com/minimalefforttech/beb

What It Does

• Builds Blender extension zip archives from manifest.json, manifest.yaml, or manifest.yml
• Downloads and caches dependency wheels per target platform
• Embeds explicit custom wheels from disk, glob patterns, or local builds
• Generates HTML docs from Markdown when Markdown is available
• Creates deploy bundles containing extension archives, docs output, and install notes
• Exposes the workflow through both the beb CLI and the Python API

Installation

pip install beb

The published package name is beb, and the top-level import package is also beb.

PyYAML and Markdown are standard dependencies, but the builder still handles JSON-only or non-docs workflows when those optional features are unavailable at runtime.

CLI Workflow

beb validate
beb build
beb install
beb deploy

• beb build creates a single extension archive.
• beb install builds the archive and installs it into a Blender instance.
• beb deploy builds the configured deploy variants and assembles a distributable bundle.

Manifest Highlights

Core sections:

• id, version, name, blender_version_min: extension metadata
• paths.include, paths.exclude: file selection for the package
• requires: dependency wheels resolved from pip
• embedded_wheels: explicit wheels to include from disk or local builds
• docs: Markdown-to-HTML build settings
• deploy: deploy variants and install instructions

Deploy Variants

Each deploy.variants[] entry can adjust build-shaping fields without redefining the whole manifest.

Supported variant fields:

• suffix
• description
• platforms
• blender_version_min
• blender_version_max
• paths.include
• paths.exclude
• requires
• wheels
• docs

Variant behavior:

• paths.include and paths.exclude are additive. Variant patterns are appended after the base manifest patterns.
• requires updates the base requirement list by package name.
• Prefix a requirement with ! to remove that base package for the variant, for example !pillow.
• A non-! requirement replaces any base requirement with the same package name and then adds the new entry.
• wheels: false skips pip-resolved wheels from requires, but explicit embedded_wheels are still included.
• docs: true embeds generated HTML docs into that variant archive at docs.output_dir.

If a variant uses platforms: ["all"], the generated blender_manifest.toml omits the platforms field instead of writing platforms = ["all"].

Docs Output

When docs.enabled is true, docs can be emitted in two ways:

• Set deploy.variants[].docs to true to embed generated HTML in that variant archive.
• Leave docs unset or false for all variants to generate one separate documentation folder in the deploy bundle.

Python API

from beb import build_extension, build_deploy_bundle, load_manifest

result = build_extension("manifest.json")
archives = build_deploy_bundle("manifest.json").archive_paths
manifest = load_manifest("manifest.json")

Repository Layout

• beb: importable package
• cli: repository helper entry points
• examples: sample manifests for common workflows
• docs: user and developer guides
• tests: automated coverage for manifests, wheels, builder behavior, and docs

Documentation

• User guide: docs/user_guide.md
• Developer guide: docs/developer_guide.md

Releases

GitHub Actions builds wheels and source distributions on pushes and publishes tagged releases to PyPI.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE.