Why are there no Makefiles for automation in Python projects?

Actually, automation is useful to Python developers too!

Invoke is probably the closest tool to what you have in mind, for automation of common repetitive Python tasks: https://github.com/pyinvoke/invoke

With invoke, you can create a tasks.py like this one (borrowed from the invoke docs)

from invoke import run, task

@task
def clean(docs=False, bytecode=False, extra=""):
    patterns = ['build']
    if docs:
        patterns.append('docs/_build')
    if bytecode:
        patterns.append('**/*.pyc')
    if extra:
        patterns.append(extra)
    for pattern in patterns:
        run("rm -rf %s" % pattern)

@task
def build(docs=False):
    run("python setup.py build")
    if docs:
        run("sphinx-build docs docs/_build")

You can then run the tasks at the command line, for example:

$ invoke clean
$ invoke build --docs

Another option is to simply use a Makefile. For example, a Python project’s Makefile could look like this:

docs:
    $(MAKE) -C docs clean
    $(MAKE) -C docs html
    open docs/_build/html/index.html

release: clean
    python setup.py sdist upload

sdist: clean
    python setup.py sdist
    ls -l dist