Anise is a Python-based execution engine for automation tasks. Automation tasks exist in software development, and probably all kinds of other sectors. They typically require the execution of different smaller and larger tools. Complex tasks often need a sequence of many steps to execute, with some steps having dependencies to each other. Manually triggering all these steps in the graphical interfaces of all the involved tools is possible in theory, but will generate errors and frustration after some cycles. The automation interfaces of those tools are sometimes easier, but sometimes they are error-prone. Some tasks may also need to ask the user for some information in an interactive way. Some smaller parts might also be machine-specific (e.g. filesystem paths or the code how to access a password vault), while the entire task must be runnable on some different machines. In some situations, this can lead to a rather intransparent forest of different tools, with unique oddnesses and special conventions. As the number of different project increases, you will see more and more different tools, often doing a similar job, but for different platforms or frameworks and, of course, with different usage conventions. Spontaneously written glue scripts help in the beginning, but will explode as the complexity exceeds some threshold.

Typical tasks in software development could be: Generating documentation Testing Creating packages Creating a homepage Deploying homepage Handling version information e.g. print it in the manual and more The anise framework allows you to implement all those tasks in a structured but generic way in a combination of XML and Python code. The anise engine executes arbitrary Python code and provides some additional services like logging, parameter passing from command line, basic graphical user interface support, a plugin interface, a flexible event system, injecting code and data from other place, dependencies between code fragments, and more.