Invoke is a Python (2.6+ and 3.3+) task execution tool & library, drawing inspiration from various sources to arrive at a powerful & clean feature set.

• Like Ruby's Rake tool and Invoke's own predecessor Fabric 1.x, it provides a clean, high level API for running shell commands and defining/organizing task functions from a tasks.py file:

  from invoke import task
  
  @task
  def clean(ctx, docs=False, bytecode=False, extra=''):
      patterns = ['build']
      if docs:
          patterns.append('docs/_build')
      if bytecode:
          patterns.append('**/*.pyc')
      if extra:
          patterns.append(extra)
      for pattern in patterns:
          ctx.run("rm -rf %s" % pattern)
  
  @task
  def build(ctx, docs=False):
      ctx.run("python setup.py build")
      if docs:
          ctx.run("sphinx-build docs docs/_build")

• From GNU Make, it inherits an emphasis on minimal boilerplate for common patterns and the ability to run multiple tasks in a single invocation:

  $ invoke clean build

• Where Fabric 1.x considered the command-line approach the default mode of use, Invoke (and tools built on it) are equally at home embedded in your own Python code or a REPL:

  >>> from invoke import run
  >>> result = run("pip install -r requirements.txt", hide=True, warn=True)
  >>> print(result.ok)
  True
  >>> print(result.stdout[-1])
  Successfully installed invocations-0.13.0 pep8-1.5.7 spec-1.3.1
  >>>

• Following the lead of most Unix CLI applications, it offers a traditional flag-based style of command-line parsing, deriving flag names and value types from task signatures (optionally, of course!):

  $ invoke clean --docs --bytecode build --docs --extra='**/*.pyo'
  $ invoke clean -d -b build --docs -e '**/*.pyo'
  $ invoke clean -db build -de '**/*.pyo'

• Like many of its predecessors, it offers advanced features as well --namespacing, task aliasing, before/after hooks, parallel execution and more.

For documentation, including detailed installation information, please see http://pyinvoke.org. Post-install usage information may be found in invoke --help.

You can install the development version via pip install -e git+https://github.com/pyinvoke/invoke#egg=invoke.