dud VS Task

I've used DVC in the past and generally liked its approach. That said, I wholeheartedly agree that it's clunky. It does a lot of things implicitly, which can make it hard to reason about. It was also extremely slow for medium-sized dataset (low 10s of GBs).

In response, I created a command-line tool that addresses these issues[0]. To reduce the comparison to an analogy: Dud : DVC :: Flask : Django.

[0]: https://github.com/kevin-hanselman/dud

There is also https://github.com/kevin-hanselman/dud

I very much agree with you about DVC's feature creep. The other issue I have with it is speed. DVC has left me scratching my head at its sluggishness many times. Because of these factors, I've been working on an alternative that focuses on simplicity and speed[0]. My tool is often five to ten times faster than DVC[1]. I'd love to hear what you think.

[0]: https://github.com/kevin-hanselman/dud

[1]: https://kevin-hanselman.github.io/dud/benchmarks/

I don't know about replacing Make with Docker, but I use the two together to good effect. One of my favorite hacks is adding a 'docker-%' rule in my Makefile to run make commands in a Docker image[1]. It's a bit mind-bending, and there's a few gotchas, but it works surprisingly well for simple rules.

[1]: https://github.com/kevin-hanselman/dud/blob/e98de8fcdf7ad564...

Thanks for sharing your experience. It's non-trivial and surprising behavior like this that drove me to build a custom system[0] myself. When I started researching version control tools for large files, I remember feeling like git-annex and Git LFS were awkwardly bolted onto Git; Git simply wasn't designed for large files. Then I found DVC[1], and its approach rang true for me. However, after using DVC for a year or so, I grew tired of DVC's many puzzling behaviors (most of which are outlined in the README at [0]). In the end, I built the tool I wanted for the job -- one that is exceptionally simple and fast.

[0]: https://github.com/kevin-hanselman/dud

So many tools in this space! This one looks a little bit like go-task, but it seems maybe better for production workflows because if timeout support, while go-task seems more aimed to command line work/makefile replacement.

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https://github.com/go-task/task

View on GitHub

A similar tool is `task` https://taskfile.dev/ . It is quite capable and also a single executable. I've grown to quite like it.

check out tasks - a bit of a learning curve but arguably more powerful imo

That's when I came across taskfile.dev. Task is an automation tool designed to be more accessible than other options, such as GNU Make.

Full disclosure, I did not review Conda or Hatch fully. Not that there is anything explicitly wrong with either of them. Conda is too specific to the scientific community for my general taste. Hatch seems to go well with Conda and also uses the PyProject manifest as well. It's nice that it gives you several built in tools, similar to commit hooks, but I tend to like to roll my own via a Taskfile and run them with Poetry.

Taskfile is a tool for streamlining repetitive development tasks. It helps automate activities like building, testing, and deploying applications. Unlike Makefile, Taskfile uses YAML for configuration, making it more readable and user-friendly.

9. We test everything with another promotion which runs make targets which build docker containers to run python scripts (pytest)

This is also built by a complicated web of wildcarded makefile targets, which need to be interoperable and support a few if/else cases for specific components.

My plan is to migrate all of this to something simpler and more straightforward, or at least more maintainable, which is honestly probably going to turn into taskfile[0] instead of makefiles, and then simple python scripts for the glue that ties everything together or does more complex logic.

My hope is that it can be more straightforward and easier to maintain, with more component-ized logic, but realistically every step in that labyrinthine build process (and that's just the open-source version!) came from a decision made by a very talented team of engineers who know far more about the process and the product than I do. At this point I'm wondering if it would make 'more sense' to replace it with a giant python script of some kind and get access to all the logic we need all at once (it would not).

[0] https://taskfile.dev/

task - a task runner and a replacement for make