I like using Makefiles. They work great both as simple task runners as well as build systems for medium-size projects. This is my starter template for Python projects. Note: This blog post assumes some basic knowledge of how make and Makefiles work. Basic configuration I like using bash as the default shell. Then set some flags to exit on error (-eu -o pipefail), warn about undefined variables and disable built-in rules.

Some neat tricks for using Makefiles with Python that I hadn’t seen before. The one I have seen, having a help target, has been super useful in team environments and for debugging when used with variables.