Introduction to Rake

by Nathan Hennig

Code version used while writing this article:

• Rails Version: 5.2.2
• Ruby Version: 2.6.0-rc1

What is Rake?

The word Rake is a portmanteau of Ruby and Make (Make is one of the classic tools for building software).

(The following text is copied from the ruby/rake GitHub repository)

Rake is a Make-like program implemented in Ruby. Tasks and dependencies are specified in standard Ruby syntax.

Rake has the following features:

• Rakefiles (rake’s version of Makefiles) are completely defined in standard Ruby syntax. No XML files to edit. No quirky > Makefile syntax to worry about (is that a tab or a space?)

• Users can specify tasks with prerequisites.

• Rake supports rule patterns to synthesize implicit tasks.

• Flexible FileLists that act like arrays but know about manipulating file names and paths.

• A library of prepackaged tasks to make building rakefiles easier. For example, tasks for building tarballs. (Formerly > tasks for building RDoc, Gems, and publishing to FTP were included in rake but they’re now available in RDoc, RubyGems, > and rake-contrib respectively.)

• Supports parallel execution of tasks.

Any developer who uses Ruby on Rails will be familiar with at least a few Rails specific rake tasks. The ones I use the most frequently are rake routes and the rake db series. You can see all the rake tasks available to you using rake --tasks.

Rake Hello World

Rake can be installed with gem install rake. If you’re using Rails, it comes with Rake by default.

Rake tasks are kept in Rakefiles, so our first step is to create a Rakefile file. Once you have a Rakefile, go ahead and open it in your preferred text editor.

task default: %w[hello_world]

task :hello_world do
  # ruby "hello.rb"
  puts "Hello World"
end

This Rakefile has two tasks. The first is default which has the hello_world task as a dependency. Using the rake command without any arguments will run the default task. Ruby files can be run using the ruby "<path>" method, but to save time I’ve just directly written puts "Hello World".

Conclusion

Rake is a great tool for any Ruby programmer. Whenever you find your self running a set of commands frequently, you should stop and ask yourself: “Could I write a Rake task for this?”

Further Reading/References

• Ruby On Rails Guide - Rake
• GitHub - ruby/rake
• Avdi Grimm’s Rake Series - Rake Basics
• Wikipedia - Make