Paver is a Python-based build/distribution/deployment scripting tool along the
lines of Make or Rake. What makes Paver unique is its integration with commonly
used Python libraries. Common tasks that were easy before remain easy. More
importantly, dealing with your applications specific needs and requirements is
now much easier.
* Build files are just Python
* One file with one syntax, pavement.py, knows how to manage your project
* File operations are unbelievably easy, thanks to the built-in version of
Jason Orendorff’s path.py.
* Need to do something that takes 5 lines of code? It’ll only take 5 lines of
code..
* Completely encompasses distutils and setuptools so that you can customize
behavior as you need to.
* Wraps Sphinx for generating documentation, and adds utilities that make it
easier to incorporate fully tested sample code.
* Wraps Subversion for working with code that is checked out.
* Wraps virtualenv to allow you to trivially create a bootstrap script that
gets a virtual environment up and running. This is a great way to install
packages into a contained environment.
* Can use all of these other libraries, but requires none of them
* Easily transition from setup.py without making your users learn about or
even install Paver! (See the Getting Started Guide for an example).