From: Stefan Lang <langstefan@...>
Date: 2005-04-04T04:47:35+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] Rant 0.3.2

On Sunday 03 April 2005 19:23, Jamis Buck wrote:
> On Apr 3, 2005, at 10:40 AM, Stefan Lang wrote:
> > Rant is a flexible build tool written entirely in Ruby,
> > similar to Rake.
>
> Could you expand on that a little bit more? What are some of the
> differences between Rake and Rant? From the name it sounds like the
> relationship might be "Rake is to Make as Rant is to Ant", but that's
> just a shot in the dark.
>
> - Jamis

During development I use the following build tools as reference:
* Ant (Java)
* Nant (C#)
* make
* SCons (Python)
* Rake

Since the name Rake was already taken, I choose Rant.
(Although Rant perhaps sounds a bit "ambiguous" to (native) English
speakers :-)

WRT comparison with Rake: I replied to a post of Florian Gross in
which i explained some differences between Rake and Rant. Just
look for the header "Re: [ANN] First release of Rant". If you like,
I can send you the relevant email.
Anyway a short list of differences here:

Since the last release, Rant lets you define subdirectories:

  file "prog" => "src/main.o" do
    # puts some actions here
  end
  subdirs "src", "doc"

Now Rant will look for a task "main.o" in an Rantfile in "src/".
src/Rantfile could contain:

  file "main.o" => "main.c" do
    # compile main.c to main.o
  end

A short Rantfile for your Ruby application could look like:

  import %w(rubytest rubydoc rubypackage)
  
  lib_files = Dir["lib/**/*.rb"]
  dist_files = lib_files + %w(Rantfile README) + Dir["{test,bin}/*"]
  
  desc "Run unit tests."
  gen RubyTest do |t|
      t.test_dir = "test"
      t.pattern = "tc_*.rb"
  end
  
  desc "Generate html documentation."
  gen RubyDoc do |t|
      t.opts = %w(--title wgrep --main README README)
  end
  
  desc "Create packages."
  gen RubyPackage, :wgrep do |t|
      t.version    "1.0.0"
      t.summary    "Simple grep program."
      t.files      dist_files
      t.bindir     "bin"
      t.executable "wgrep"
      t.package_task
  end
  
  task :clean do
      sys.rm_rf %w(doc packages)
  end

With this Rantfile, rant runs unit tests, RDoc, creates tar.gz, zip
and gem packages and provides the "clean" task.

We use +import+ in this file, which does a similar thing as require.
But it allows the following:
  % rant-import --auto ant
And now you have an Rant script in the file "ant" which makes your project
independent from an Rant installation. Just run:
  % ruby ant

You can define tasks and run Rant from irb, use it as a library or
invoke your Rantfile directly. Although it looks like Rant would
introduce methods in the global namespace, it doesn't. Methods of
the FileUtils module can be called through the +sys+ method.

Besides that, Rant provides (primitive) support for C# and a "Configure"
plugin.

I recommend to read the Rant documentation at http://make.rubyforge.org/.

Stefan