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