Question

I’m using Fabric for project management, deployment, etc. I don’t really understand the more convenient way to run commands. For example, considering I don’t care of capture and shell arguments of Fabric local function, which are pros/cons of the following?

os.mkdir(path)

VS

local("mkdir %s" % path)

Answer 1

Depending on the goals of your project, either may be slightly more appropriate. Here are some pros and cons.

• Pros for python standard library functions
  • cross platform compatible
  • usually more efficient since no child process is created
  • overall less complex as involve fewer modules, processes, moving parts, shell parsing, etc (therefore easier to debug as well)
• Pros for fabric local
  • easier to switch between local and run or sudo as your project changes
  • more consistent with run and sudo

I think simple local commands that can easily be represented using standard library functions should be written just using the standard library as a default choice due to lower complexity. Case by case, I’d ask myself which is more likely: running this fabfile.py program on different OSes or converting this command from a local to a remote command and then code as calls to local if the latter is more likely.