Rake Task Management Essentials

Andrey Koleshko

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781783280773
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Informatique
• Subtopic: Programmation en Ruby

In Detail

Rake is a build automation tool written in Ruby. It allows you to specify tasks and describe dependencies as well as group tasks in a namespace. Rake uses Ruby's anonymous function blocks to define various tasks, allowing the use of the Ruby syntax. Rake's goal is to automate build processes quickly and expressively.

"Rake Task Management Essentials" is a practical guide that covers the latest techniques in building, testing, and debugging rake tasks to solve real-world automation challenges. The book starts with a basic knowledge of Rake, allowing you to solve repetitive tasks. Then it provides you with information about processes performed with files, which is crucial for understanding the application of the tool. It includes demonstrations to show you how tasks can be run in parallel and how they can be applied in practice. Thereafter, it integrates Rake with Ruby with the help of simple and clear examples. By the end of this book, you will know how Rake has changed the programming world, especially in the Ruby community.

Approach

A step-by-step and interactive approach explaining the Rake essentials along with code examples and advanced features.

Who this book is for

If you are a developer who is acquainted with the Ruby language and want to speed up writing the code concerned with files, then this book is for you. To start reading this book, a basic knowledge of Ruby is required; however, an extensive experience with the language is not necessary.

Rake Task Management Essentials

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Table of Contents

Rake Task Management Essentials

Credits

About the Author

Acknowledgements

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more

Why Subscribe?

Free Access for Packt account holders

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. The Software Task Management Tool – Rake

Installing Rake

Introducing rake tasks

The command-line arguments

Using global Rakefiles to run tasks anywhere

Defining custom rake tasks

Task dependencies – prerequisites

Multiple tasks definitions

Passing arguments to the tasks

The first alternative

The second variant

The structure of a Rake project

Using the import method to load other Rakefiles

Running rake tasks from other tasks

The code conventions of Rake

Summary

2. Working with Files

Using file tasks to work with files

The characteristics of the file task dependencies

Creating a folder with the directory method

Using Rake's file utilities

Using the FileList module functionality to collect the files

Using pathmap to transform file lists

Introducing the FileUtils module

A practical example of automatically generating a config file

Summary

3. Working with Rules

Understanding the duplication of the file tasks

Using a rule to get rid of the duplicated file tasks

Detecting a source for the rule dynamically

Using a regular expression to match more tasks

Summary

4. Cleaning Up a Build

Setting up a project

The cleaning tasks

Summary

5. Running Tasks in Parallel

Defining tasks with parallel prerequisites

Thread safety of multitasks

Multiple task definitions with a common prerequisite

Applying multitasks in practice

Summary

6. Debugging Rake Tasks

Using command-line arguments for debugging

Getting a dependency's resolution with --prereqs

Using the --rules option to trace the rule resolution

Using the Ruby approach to debug a Rake project

Summary

7. Integration with Rails

Introducing Rake's integration with Rails

Custom rake tasks in a Rails project

Recurrent running of tasks

Summary

8. Testing Rake Tasks

The need for tests

Writing tests for rake tasks

Summary

9. Continuous Integration

Introducing Jenkins

Setting up Jenkins

Configuring Jenkins to run rake tasks

Summary

10. Relentless Automation

Examples of Rake being used by famous gems

The pain of task execution

Sinatra using Rake to run tests

Sinatra using Rake to generate documentation

Capistrano extending the Rake implementation

Other examples of Sinatra using Rake

Thor – the next generation of Rake

Summary

Index

Rake Task Management Essentials

Copyright © 2014 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: April 2014

Production Reference: 1140414

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

35 Livery Street

Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78328-077-3

www.packtpub.com

Cover Image by Kim Nousaine (<[email protected]>)

Credits

Author

Andrey Koleshko

Reviewers

Mario Miguel Agüero Obando

Stuart Ellis

Avinasha Sastry

Commissioning Editor

Grant Mizen

Acquisition Editor

Neha Nagwekar

Content Development Editor

Priya Singh

Technical Editor

Dennis John

Copy Editor

Stuti Srivastava

Project Coordinator

Harshal Ved

Proofreaders

Simran Bhogal

Ameesha Green

Indexer

Mehreen Deshmukh

Graphics

Sheetal Aute

Production Coordinator

Arvindkumar Gupta

Cover Work

Arvindkumar Gupta

About the Author

Andrey Koleshko had his first touch with programming while at school, when he worked on Pascal. He had been solving basic algorithmic tasks. The first programming language he used at the beginning of his career was Java. He worked with this language for a year and then migrated to the Ruby language, which he worked with for the next four years. Of these four years, he worked with Altoros for three. He had an amazing time there, learning the language and technologies deeply.

Currently, he works at a local cloud hosting company. The company change provided him with the opportunity to deal with a lot of challenges concerning application architecture, code testing, debugging, and deployment processes. As a result, he has been able to contribute to some famous Ruby libraries. More detailed information about his contributions can be found on GitHub at http://github.com/ka8725.

He mostly works with the Rails framework. He openly shares all of his thoughts and his most interesting experiences through his blog at http://railsguides.net. He has recently started to learn the Python programming language.

He lives in Minsk, Belarus, and likes to watch and play sports such as soccer, ping-pong, and volleyball. He also likes travelling to tropical countries with his wife. Teaching people gives him immense pleasure.

Acknowledgements

I'm thankful to many people who've helped me write this book. But firstly, I would like to thank the publishers who offered me an opportunity to write this book. If it wasn't for them, who knows what would have happened with this book. Thankfully, the Packt Publishing team was very supportive and helped me deliver this useful book with high quality. A big thanks goes to Sergey Avseyev, who always supported me in the technical and difficult parts of the book. He also made me believe...