Invoke

Installation and Setup

Install it from Python Package Index (PyPI) into a virtual environment or directly on your system:

$ python -m pip install invoke

Key Features

• Defines tasks as regular Python functions decorated with @task.
• Executes shell commands through .run() and supports configurable behavior driven by Invoke’s configuration system.
• Organizes tasks into nested namespaces using collection, exposing dot-separated names like docs.build.
• Provides both CLI and library APIs, allowing you to reuse Invoke’s parser and runner building blocks in custom tooling.

Usage

In a typical workflow, you define a set of @task functions in tasks.py and call them from the command line. Here’s a toy example:

from invoke import task

@task
def greet(c, name="World"):
    c.run(f"echo Hello, {name}!")

With this file in place you can run the greet task:

$ invoke greet
Hello, World!
$ invoke greet --name="Real Python"
Hello, Real Python!

List available tasks

$ invoke --list

Organize tasks into namespaces:

from invoke import Collection, task

@task
def build_docs(c):
    c.run("echo 'Building documentation...'")
    # Buid command here...

@task
def clean_docs(c):
    c.run("echo 'Cleaning documentation...'")
    # Cleanup command here...

ns = Collection()
docs = Collection("docs")
docs.add_task(build_docs, "build")
docs.add_task(clean_docs, "clean")
ns.add_collection(docs)

Then call:

$ invoke docs.build
Building documentation...
$ invoke docs.clean
Cleaning documentation...