A library for managing setuptools packaging needs in a consistent manner.
pbr reads and then filters the setup.cfg data through a setup hook to fill in default values and provide more sensible behaviors, and then feeds the results in as the arguments to a call to setup.py - so the heavy lifting of handling Python packaging needs is still being done by setuptools.
Note that we don’t support the easy_install aspects of setuptools: while we depend on setup_requires, for any install_requires we recommend that they be installed prior to running setup.py install - either by hand, or by using an install tool such as pip.
pbr can and does do a bunch of things for you: