Rake is a software build tool. It is similar to SCons and make, but has a number of differences. The tool is written in the Ruby programming language and the Rakefiles (equivalent of Makefiles in make) use Ruby syntax. It was originated by Jim Weirich.

Rake uses Ruby's anonymous function blocks to define various tasks, allowing the use of the Ruby syntax. There's a library of common tasks available, for example, functions to do common file-manipulation tasks and a library to remove compiled files (the "clean" task). Like Make, Rake can also synthesize tasks based on patterns (for example, automatically building a file compilation task based on filename patterns).

External links

• Rake documentation
• RubyForge project page for Rake
• Building with Rake, Jim Weirich's 2003 RubyConf presentation
• Using the Rake build language by Martin Fowler

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