simple-build

A simple build-backend for Python.

The package implements the build backend interface, defined in https://peps.python.org/pep-0517, and https://peps.python.org/pep-0660.

It is very similar to flit and hatch, but it has one key additional feature I required: pre-write hooks. This is bit similar to hatch's build hook, but offers a lot more freedom to modify the packaged files.

Usage

Simply add the following to your pyproject.toml:

[build-system]
requires = ["simple-build"]
build-backend = "simple_build.backend"

Features

modules in src folder

The module will be found by the project name (normalising - to _), and supports packages in the common src folder layout, or at the root of the package.

[project]
name = "my-project"

pyproject.toml
src/
    my_project/
        __init__.py

Dynamic project metadata

The following fields can be set as dynamic values:

[project]
dynamic = ["version", "description", "authors"]

The values are then read from the root file of the package (__init__.py or the single module file):

"""My project description."""
__version__ = "0.1.0"
__author__ = "John Doe"
__email__ = "johndoe@email.com"

Git integration

By default the packaging will respect the .gitignore file, and exclude all files listed in it.

You can also configure this in the pyproject.toml:

[tool.build.sdist]
use_git = true
include = ["my_file.txt", ...]
exclude = ["my_file.txt", ...]

pre-write hooks

In your pyproject.toml you can define a list of hooks that can modify the files before they are written to the sdist or wheel:

[tool.build]
pre_write_hooks = ["my_hook.py"]

A hook file should contain a function with the following signature:

from pathlib import Path
from typing import Literal
from simple_build.analyse import PackageAnalysis

def pre_write_hook(
    type: Literal["sdist", "wheel"], src: Path, module: str | None, analysis: PackageAnalysis
) -> None:
    """A pre-write hook, to modify files before writing them to the sdist or wheel.

    :param path: The path to the temporary folder containing the files that will be written to the sdist/wheel.
        This can be modified in place, including deleting files and adding new ones.
    :param module: The name of the module.
    :param package: The package analysis.
    """