After discovering how cool Capistrano is for use with Rails, I went looking for a python equivalent for django.  While it’s not specifically focusing on django, that equivalent is fabric.  It’s decent though it a bit rudimentary in comparison to Capistrano.  Things like only having a single namespace and how you pass arguments to verbs are my biggest complaints.

One of the neat things about python is it’s use of doc strings for generating documentation.  Fabric makes some use of docs strings for outputting help but it again feels a bit clunky.  For example, when you use the -l option on fabric, it lists the command verbs (implemented as functions) along with the first line of the doc string associated with a command.

So:

[host:~/Projects/server] user% fab -l

Available commands:
    clean_db                 Deletes existing db, runs syncdb, adds user. NO...
    clean_up                 Clean up byte compiled files and emacs backups.
    dump_data                Dumps the existing data to a file.

And if you wanted more detail, you’d need to add the -d option for a specific command:

[host:~/Projects/server] user% fab -d clean_db
    Displaying detailed information for command 'clean_db':
    Deletes existing db, runs syncdb, adds user. NOTE: DATA LOSS

def help(command):
    from fabric.main import display_command

[host:~/Projects/server] user% fab help:clean_db
    Displaying detailed information for command 'clean_db':
    Deletes existing db, runs syncdb, adds user. NOTE: DATA LOSS