vulcan-builder 0.2.4

Features

• Easy to learn.

• Build tasks are just python funtions.

• Manages dependencies between tasks.

• Automatically generates a command line interface.

• Rake style param passing to tasks

• Supports python 2.7 and python 3.x

• Async tasks

Todo Features

• Additional tasks timing reporting

• Debug mode

Installation

You can install vulcan-builder from the Python Package Index (PyPI) or from source.

Using pip

$ pip install vulcan-builder

Using easy_install

$ easy_install vulcan-builder

Example

The build script is written in pure Python and vulcan-builder takes care of managing any dependencies between tasks and generating a command line interface.

Writing build tasks is really simple, all you need to know is the @task decorator. Tasks are just regular Python functions marked with the @task() decorator. Dependencies are specified with @task() too. Tasks can be ignored with the @task(ignore=True). Disabling a task is an useful feature to have in situations where you have one task that a lot of other tasks depend on and you want to quickly remove it from the dependency chains of all the dependent tasks.

build.py

#!/usr/bin/python

import sys
from vulcan.builder import task

@task()
def clean():
    '''Clean build directory.'''
    print 'Cleaning build directory...'

@task(clean)
def html(target='.'):
    '''Generate HTML.'''
    print 'Generating HTML in directory "%s"' %  target

@task(clean, ignore=True)
def images():
    '''Prepare images.'''
    print 'Preparing images...'

@task(html,images)
def start_server(server='localhost', port = '80'):
    '''Start the server'''
    print 'Starting server at %s:%s' % (server, port)

@task(start_server) #Depends on task with all optional params
def stop_server():
    print 'Stopping server....'

@task()
def copy_file(src, dest):
    print 'Copying from %s to %s' % (src, dest)

@task()
def echo(*args,**kwargs):
    print args
    print kwargs

# Default task (if specified) is run when no task is specified in the command line
# make sure you define the variable __DEFAULT__ after the task is defined
# A good convention is to define it at the end of the module
# __DEFAULT__ is an optional member

__DEFAULT__=start_server

Running vulcan-builder tasks

The command line interface and help is automatically generated. Task descriptions are extracted from function docstrings.

$ vb -h
usage: vb [-h] [-l] [-v] [-f file] [task [task ...]]

positional arguments:
  task                  perform specified task and all its dependencies

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -l, --list-tasks      List the tasks
  -v, --version         Display the version information
  -f file, --file file  Build file to read the tasks from. Default is
                        'build.py'

$ vb -l
Tasks in build file ./build.py:
  clean                       Clean build directory.
  copy_file
  echo
  html                        Generate HTML.
  images           [Ignored]  Prepare images.
  start_server     [Default]  Start the server
  stop_server

Powered by vulcan-builder - A Lightweight Python Build Tool.

vulcan-builder takes care of dependencies between tasks. In the following case start_server depends on clean, html and image generation (image task is ignored).

$ vb #Runs the default task start_server. It does exactly what "vb start_server" would do.
[ example.py - Starting task "clean" ]
Cleaning build directory...
[ example.py - Completed task "clean" ]
[ example.py - Starting task "html" ]
Generating HTML in directory "."
[ example.py - Completed task "html" ]
[ example.py - Ignoring task "images" ]
[ example.py - Starting task "start_server" ]
Starting server at localhost:80
[ example.py - Completed task "start_server" ]

The first few characters of the task name is enough to execute the task, as long as the partial name is unambigious. You can specify multiple tasks to run in the commandline. Again the dependencies are taken taken care of.

$ vb cle ht cl
[ example.py - Starting task "clean" ]
Cleaning build directory...
[ example.py - Completed task "clean" ]
[ example.py - Starting task "html" ]
Generating HTML in directory "."
[ example.py - Completed task "html" ]
[ example.py - Starting task "clean" ]
Cleaning build directory...
[ example.py - Completed task "clean" ]

The ‘html’ task dependency ‘clean’ is run only once. But clean can be explicitly run again later.

vb tasks can accept parameters from commandline.

$ vb "copy_file[/path/to/foo, path_to_bar]"
[ example.py - Starting task "clean" ]
Cleaning build directory...
[ example.py - Completed task "clean" ]
[ example.py - Starting task "copy_file" ]
Copying from /path/to/foo to path_to_bar
[ example.py - Completed task "copy_file" ]

vb can also accept keyword arguments.

$ vb start[port=8888]
[ example.py - Starting task "clean" ]
Cleaning build directory...
[ example.py - Completed task "clean" ]
[ example.py - Starting task "html" ]
Generating HTML in directory "."
[ example.py - Completed task "html" ]
[ example.py - Ignoring task "images" ]
[ example.py - Starting task "start_server" ]
Starting server at localhost:8888
[ example.py - Completed task "start_server" ]

$ vb echo[hello,world,foo=bar,blah=123]
[ example.py - Starting task "echo" ]
('hello', 'world')
{'blah': '123', 'foo': 'bar'}
[ example.py - Completed task "echo" ]

Organizing build scripts

You can break up your build files into modules and simple import them into your main build file.

from deploy_tasks import *
from test_tasks import functional_tests, report_coverage

Contributors/Contributing

• Raghunandan Rao - vulcan-builder is preceded by and forked from pynt, which was created by Raghunandan Rao.

• Calum J. Eadie - pynt is preceded by and forked from microbuild, which was created by Calum J. Eadie.

If you want to make changes the repo is at https://github.com/exrny/vulcan-builder. You will need pytest to run the tests

$ ./vb t

It will be great if you can raise a pull request once you are done.

If you find any bugs or need new features please raise a ticket in the issues section of the github repo.

License

vulcan-builder is licensed under a MIT license

0.2.4 - 12/09/2026

• Load build files through importlib, as imp is gone in Python 3.12

0.1.0 - 04/02/2018

• Initial commit