regarding your point about Python build tools: myself, I've never found the need to use a formal build tool. Shell scripts work just fine. The beauty of writing

regarding your point about Python build tools: myself, I've never found the need to use a formal build tool. Shell scripts work just fine. The beauty of writing a shell script is that (1) it doesn't reinvent the wheel (you reuse all the other shell commands & userland tools you had available anyway), (2) it's as short and simple as you want, and (3) as long as you only have to build on fairly similar systems (Unixen, Linux distros) it's really not that hard to make it cross-platform enough for your needs. True you don't get fancy target/lazy/dependency resolution semantics: but so? It sometimes just doesn't matter. Plus CPU + disk are cheap these days, programmer time is still not cheap.