Ruby on Rails/Built-In Rails Tools/What is Rake anyway?

Rake is a Ruby build tool like make and Ant.


 * Rakefiles (rake’s version of Makefiles) are completely defined in standard Ruby syntax. No XML files to edit. No quirky Makefile syntax to worry about (is that a tab or a space?)
 * Users can specify tasks with prerequisites.
 * Rake supports rule patterns to synthesize implicit tasks.
 * Flexible FileLists that act like arrays but know about manipulating file names and paths.
 * A library of prepackaged tasks to make building rakefiles easier.