What is a Rakefile?

Question

I have started learning Ruby and just tried out my first hello world program in NetBeans IDE. I have one doubt, I can see that the new project wizard created set of package

Answer 1

I've been using a rake file to manually kick off a call in the code to import various config files.

My rake file "import_contracts.rake" has the following code:

require 'yaml'

task :import_choice_contracts => :environment do
  desc 'Import Choice Contracts for Contract Service'
  path = "/Users/ernst.r/Desktop/import_contract.yml"
  PhiDao::Contract::Service.import_contract_from_file(path)
end

This rake task calls the "import_contract_from_file()" method and passes it the path to a file to import. Once the server is running I use the command "rake import_choice_contracts". Its great for testing my code while I still don't have a GUI frontend to call the completed code in the backend.

Fissh

Answer 2

It is an alternative to Makefile with Ruby syntax.

Answer 3

As a follow-up, you may find these resources helpful:

• Using the Rake Build Language
• rake (there are good links here to additional tutorials or webcasts)
• Basic Rake (video of a talk by Jim Weirich)
• Power Rake (video of a talk by Jim Weirich)

Jim was the creator and maintainer of Rake before his death in 2014.