What is depflow?

depflow is a tool for process automation. Set up a process with flow = depflow.Depflow() and define dependencies between steps with @flow.depends, and steps that are already in the correct state will be skipped. depflow can be used as a build system but it can also be used for deployment, configuring and bringing up systems, and many other use cases.

depflow's strength lies in its flexibility: use depflow.check and depflow.raw_check to define reusable dependencies on any type of resource - api endpoint output, system calls, process states, docker image hashes, etc.

As a word of caution, depflow isn't fast and it's only as reliable as your dependency definitions. If you're building software and need a fast, comprehensive tool I recommend tup. You can use depflow to manage other build systems though.

Here is an example process using Plumbum:

#!/bin/env python
import logging
import depflow
from plumbum.cmd import cp, cat

logging.basicConfig(level=logging.DEBUG)

flow = depflow.Depflow()

@flow.depends(depflow.file('a.txt'))
def step_a():
    cp('a.txt', 'a')


@flow.depends(depflow.file('b.txt'))
def step_b():
    cp('b.txt', 'b')


@flow.depends(step_a, step_b, depflow.file('c.txt'))
def step_c():
    cp('c.txt', 'c')
    (cat['a', 'b', 'c'] > 'done')()