Hands-On Software Engineering with Python

Repeatable build processes

The idea of having a build process may have originated with languages that require compilation before their code can be executed, but there are advantages to establishing such a process even for languages such as Python that don't. In Python's case, specifically, such a process can collect code from multiple project code bases, define requirements without actually attaching them to the final package, and package code up in a consistent fashion, ready for installation. Since a build process is, itself, another program (or at least a script-like process), it also allows for the possibility of executing other code to whatever end is needed, which means that a build process can also execute automated tests, or even ...