And if you want to build a Python/C extension, perhaps with a codegen step as well, then most of these modern tools throw their hands in the air. I had to hack

And if you want to build a Python/C extension, perhaps with a codegen step as well, then most of these modern tools throw their hands in the air. I had to hack my setup.py because PEP 517's fascination for completely isolated environment mean even a single typo fix in a Python comment meant a full re-compile of all 500KLOC in my main Python/C extension. Setuptools creates temporary directories for the .o files, and passes them to the build command. I had to override that to revert to the old behavior: class build_subclass(build): def finalize_options(self): self.build_lib = self.build_temp = self.build_platlib = None super().finalize_options() You might like my minimal wheel builder at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38111355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38111355 . No dependencies, no framework.