Invoke is a Python (2.7 and 3.4+) task execution tool &and library. It provides a clean, high level-level API for running shell commands:
>>> from invoke import run
>>> cmd = "pip install -r requirements.txt"
>>> result = run(cmd, hide=True, warn=True)
>>> print(result.ok)
True
>>> print(result.stdout.splitlines()[-1])
Successfully installed invocations-0.13.0 pep8-1.5.7 spec-1.3.1