Ale is something I got inspired to do after building Flexvite on app engine. Hopefully it saves you some time.

Requirements: OS X 10.6, git, python 2.5 (for Appengine)

#Ale

Use only what you need, convention over configuration, but prefer dry brevity over magic, no global installs (no sudos!), bad-ass testing, best of breed tools. Most of all, lightning fast gae python development.

Fair warning: That's still evolving, but here's what is there now:

A command-line tool that is easy to extend (with recipes) yet keeps installed tools isolated in a project specific configuration.

It's an odd mix of features from build tools, package management tools, and stuff you would otherwise write one-off scripts for.

There are some pre-built recipes for downloading, and configuring various tools to get your app engine python project up and running quickly and then put in place good development practices (continuous testing, coverage measurement, linting your files, etc).

It's very easy to create your own recipes as well, and they're straight up python.

You can install only the tools/commands you need and remove the ones you don't. The cool part of that is you (or someone new to your project) only sees the stuff that is relevant to your project (not 150 different commands you may or may not use).

$ mkdir myproject
$ mkdir myproject/.ale
$ cd myproject
$ curl -L http://github.com/mpstx/Ale/tarball/master | tar xz --strip 1 -C .ale
$ .ale/init.sh

The nice thing about this option is you can git pull updates of the Ale code independent of your project, at your leisure $ cd /myexistingproject $ git submodule add git://github.com/mpstx/Ale.git .ale $ .ale/init.sh

$ ale
- or - 
$ ale list
Syntax:  ale <command>

Core commands:
   list                 list commands currently recipes_installed
   create               create <command> -- create the skeleton for a new command
   install              install <command>
   remove               remove <command>    Uninstalls a command
   search               search commands available for install

$ ale search
Syntax: "ale install <command>" to activate one of these

Commands available for install:
   cleanpyc             remove *.pyc in this and all sub-dirs
   createapp            createapp [templatename]  -- create an app from a template
   gae                  google app engine .ale
   jslint               run jslint against all the .js files in the project
   pyflakes             run pyflakes (lint tool) against the project or pyflakes [dir]
   coverage             measure coverage of tests with nosetests+coverage
   test                 discover and run all unit tests using nose
   tidy                 experimental: run PythonTidy to beautify the python source files
   watcher              monitors files matching a filespec for change and triggers command(s)

$ ale install gae
$ ale install createapp
$ ale createapp helloworldapp
$ ale gae start

##Hello (webapp) World - appengine local $ ale install gae $ ale install createapp $ ale createapp helloworldwebapp $ ale gae start

##Deploy to appengine $ ale gae deploy ###See what else you can do with appengine $ ale gae Available subcommands: start -- start the local dev_appserver deploy -- deploy to the hosted gae app dash -- open the dashboard for the hosted gae app logs -- open the dashboard (on logs tab) for hosted gae app data -- open the dashboard (on data tab) for hosted gae app

##Linting Python files $ ale install pyflakes $ ale pyflakes ##Linting Javascript files $ ale install jslint $ ale jslint ##Unit Testing $ ale install test $ ale test ##Measuring test coverage $ ale install test $ ale coverage ##Continuous Testing $ ale install pyflakes $ ale install test $ ale install watcher $ ale watcher [modify a file, lint&tests re-run automatically]

... Other stuff you can do ...
$ ale watcher add py coverage
$ ale watcher remove py pyflakes

... Watch and trigger for multiple file types ...
$ ale watcher add js jslint
$ ale watcher add py coverage

... Create and add your own tasks to trigger ...
$ ale create ataskyoumake
$ ale watcher add py ataskyoumake
$ ale watcher

Great explanation pretty much written by the guy that runs the homebrew project:

Modify an existing recipe in all_recipes, or create a new one using 'ale create [command]'.

Fork http://github.com/mpstx/Ale and send me a pull-request

The easiest way to fork is with the github-gem, so potentially this is your workflow:

ale create [command]
[edit the command and test it with install, execution, remove, etc]
[commit it to your local .ale git repo]
github fork
git push myname master
github pull-request