= Rake 0.6.0 Released
Its time for some long requested enhancements and lots of bug fixes
... And a whole new web page.
== New Web Page
The primary documentation for rake has moved from the RubyForge based
wiki to its own Hieraki based web site. Constant spam on the wiki
made it a difficult to keep clean. The new site will be easier to
update and organize.
Check out the new documentation at: http://docs.rubyrake.org
We will be adding new documentation to the site as time goes on.
In addition to the new docs page, make sure you check out Martin
Fowlers article on rake at http://martinfowler.com/articles/rake.html
== Changes
=== New Features
* Multiple prerequisites on Rake rules now allowed. However, keep the
following in mind:
1. All the prerequisites of a rule must be available before a rule
is triggered, where "enabled" means (a) an existing file, (b) a
defined rule, or (c) another rule which also must be
trigger-able.
2. Rules are checked in order of definition, so it is important to
order your rules properly. If a file can be created by two
different rules, put the more specific rule first (otherwise the
more general rule will trigger first and the specific one will
never be triggered).
3. The <tt>source</tt> method now returns the name of the first
prerequisite listed in the rule. <tt>sources</tt> returns the
names of all the rule prerequisites, ordered as they are defined
in the rule. If the task has other prerequisites not defined in
the rule (but defined in an explicit task definition), then they
will _not_ be included in the sources list.
* FileLists may now use the egrep command. This popular enhancement
is now a core part of the FileList object. If you want to get a
list of all your to-dos, fixmes and TBD comments, add the following
to your Rakefile.
desc "Look for TODO and FIXME tags in the code"
task :todo do
FileList['**/*.rb'].egrep /#.*(FIXME|TODO|TBD)/
end
* The <tt>investigation</tt> method was added to task object to dump
out some important values. This makes it a bit easier to debug Rake
tasks.
For example, if you are having problems with a particular task, just
print it out:
task :huh do
puts Rake::Task['huh'].investigation
end
* The Rake::TestTask class now supports a "ruby_opts" option to pass
arbitrary ruby options to a test subprocess.
=== Some Incompatibilities
* When using the <tt>ruby</tt> command to start a Ruby subprocess, the
Ruby interpreter that is currently running rake is used by default.
This makes it easier to use rake in an environment with multiple
ruby installation. (Previously, the first ruby command found in the
PATH was used).
If you wish to chose a different Ruby interpreter, you can
explicitly choose the interpreter via the <tt>sh</tt> command.
* The major rake classes (Task, FileTask, FileCreationTask, RakeApp)
have been moved out of the toplevel scope and are now accessible as
Rake::Task, Rake::FileTask, Rake::FileCreationTask and
Rake::Application. If your Rakefile
directly references any one of these tasks, you may:
1. Update your Rakefile to use the new classnames
2. Use the --classic-namespace option on the rake command to get the
old behavior,
3. Add <code>require 'rake/classic_namespace'</code> to the
Rakefile to get the old behavior.
<tt>rake</tt> will print a rather annoying warning whenever a
deprecated class name is referenced without enabling classic
namespace.
=== Bug Fixes
* Several unit tests and functional tests were fixed to run better
under windows.
* Directory tasks are now a specialized version of a File task. A
directory task will only be triggered if it doesn't exist. It will
not be triggered if it is out of date w.r.t. any of its
prerequisites.
* Fixed a bug in the Rake::GemPackageTask class so that the gem now
properly contains the platform name.
* Fixed a bug where a prerequisite on a <tt>file</tt> task would cause
an exception if the prerequisite did not exist.
== What is Rake
Rake is a build tool similar to the make program in many ways. But
instead of cryptic make recipes, Rake uses standard Ruby code to
declare tasks and dependencies. You have the full power of a modern
scripting language built right into your build tool.
== Availability
The easiest way to get and install rake is via RubyGems ...
gem install rake (you may need root/admin privileges)
Otherwise, you can get it from the more traditional places:
Home Page:: http://rake.rubyforge.org/
Download:: http://rubyforge.org/project/showfiles.php?group_id=50
== Thanks
As usual, it was input from users that drove a alot of these changes.
The following people either contributed patches, made suggestions or
made otherwise helpful comments. Thanks to ...
* Greg Fast (better ruby_opt test options)
* Kelly Felkins (requested by better namespace support)
* Martin Fowler (suggested Task.investigation)
* Stuart Jansen (send initial patch for multiple prerequisites).
* Masao Mutch (better support for non-ruby Gem platforms)
* Philipp Neubeck (patch for file task exception fix)
···
--
-- Jim Weirich jim@weirichhouse.org http://onestepback.org
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct,
not tried it." -- Donald Knuth (in a memo to Peter van Emde Boas)
