What is Paver?
Paver is an open source build, distribution and deployment tool geared toward Python projects. It builds on existing Python modules and libraries to make all kinds of project scripting easier than ever before. For example, you could always use Python's distutils package to build a .tar.gz file of your project. But customizing how sdist works is something of a black art. With Paver, you just add a function named "sdist" to your pavement.py file.
In addition to making distutils and setuptools easy to extend, Paver includes modules to help with documentation via the Sphinx documentation tool, virtualenv for isolated deployment environments, and other common project needs. It also includes tools to make transitioning from distutils to Paver easy and seamless.
Current Activity
We are actively building out Paver while working on SitePen's Python-based projects.