Basic

Rake is a Ruby task runner. You run the rake command with arguments and the tasks to run are defined in a Rakefile which has Ruby code in it.

Samples

Hello world

Based on the blog post on the RubyGuides site.

• Rakefile

    desc "Print a greeting."
    task :greet do
      puts "Hello, world!"
    end
  

How to run it:

$ rake greet

"Hello, world!"

Task types

See the Rakefile format tutorial - it covers the syntax. Only minimal examples are shown below as these are too generic to be useful as is.

• Rakefile

    # Simple.
    task :name
      puts 'Hello, world!'
    end
  
    # With arguments.
    task :name do |t, args|
      puts "Hello, #{args.name}!"
    end
  
    # With prerequisites.
    task name: [:prereq1, :prereq2] do |t|
      puts t
    end
  
    # Alt
    # task :name, [:first_name, :last_name] do |t, args|
    # ...
  

Compile C - from Wikipedia

From the Rake page on Wikipedia.

Compile a Hello World program in C.

file 'hello.o' => 'hello.c' do
  sh 'cc -c -o hello.o hello.c'
end

file 'hello' => 'hello.o' do
  sh 'cc -o hello hello.o'
end

Rules:

rule '.o' => '.c' do |t|
  sh "cc #{t.source} -c -o #{t.name}"
end