Chapter 1. The Software Task Management Tool – Rake

In this chapter, we will cover the installation of Rake, the definition of basic terms such as rake task and Rakefile, and how to use them for easy programming issues. The introduction will be given using straightforward examples to explain the terms as clearly as possible. You will see that Rake is a tool that is written in the Ruby programming language, and that's why any Ruby code can be written in a Rake application. Also, you have the choice of using any available Ruby library in a Rake project. This feature makes Rake the winner compared to many other build tools, which use their own limited languages. The chapter will serve as a base for introducing Rake's Domain Specific Language (DSL) and project file structuring.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Installing Rake

• Introducing rake tasks

• The command-line arguments

• Using global Rakefiles to run tasks anywhere

• Defining custom rake tasks

• The structure of a Rake project

• The code conventions of Rake