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Is there a "method_missing" for rake tasks?

Answer 1

A:

In short, is there a method_missing for Rake?

In short, no. Rake is not a programming language, it's about dependencies. It's a tool to help you run automate task and it assumes you already created these tasks.

Simone Carletti 2010-04-23 20:31:00

Your answer is true, but I can't give this a +1, as I strenuously disagree that Rake is not suited to metaprogramming. In fact, the rdoc even speaks about it: "Sometimes it is useful to manipulate tasks programmatically in a Rakefile. [...] The ability to programmatically manipulate tasks gives `rake` very powerful meta-programming capabilities w.r.t. task execution."

John Feminella 2010-04-24 03:05:31

In my mind, "manipulate tasks programmatically in a Rakefile" means you can create/manipulate tasks using Ruby, like Echoe or Jeweler does. It doesn't necessary mean that rake can/should manipulate itself. Of course, I might be wrong, but the end of the story is that Rails doesn't support any method_missing mechanism.

Simone Carletti 2010-04-24 10:07:53

Wouldn't you say that Rake is, in fact, a DSL, i.e. specialized subset language, of Ruby? When you're writing Rake tasks, you *are* writing Ruby.

Jason M 2010-05-28 12:53:19

Answer 2

+2 A:

I haven't tried it, but a quick search revealed this.

If you define a rule with an empty string, you can catch any task that hasn’t been defined elsewhere. This makes it easy to dynamically create rake tasks. Essentially, this is method_missing for rake!
rule "" do |t|
  t.name 
  # ... do something with the name of the task  
end

Jason M 2010-05-28 12:30:28

works perfectly for me

opsb 2010-06-10 23:28:15

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Is there a "method_missing" for rake tasks?

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