From: Stuart Hungerford <stuart.hungerford@...>
Date: 2006-03-14T09:08:45+09:00
Subject: Rake best practices for managing multi-directory project?

Hi,

I'm currently working on a project with a number of "modules"
in different directories.  I'm using Rake to manage the running
of the module services in the correct order.

I have a directory structure something like this:


      /project
         +-- Rakefile

         +-- module A
               +-- module A files
               +-- tasks.rake

         +-- module B
               +-- module B files
               + tasks.rake

         +-- module C
               etc

So each module directory has its own tasks.rake file and all
the SQL, shell, Ruby etc scripts needed to implement the
service it provides.  Each tasks.rake uses Rake namespaces
fully to avoid any task name ambiguity across the project.

The "top level" Rakefile in /project uses Rake imports to
bring each module tasks.rake file into it and make them
available from the command line.

Are there any Rake best practices or idioms or patterns that
I could be applying in this situation?

For example, in my current setup the top level Rakefile needs
to setup module paths as global variables so the tasks.rake
files look in their own directory for script files and not the
top level directory--which seems a bit clunky.

Any advice from people using Rake for similar projects would
be much appreciated.

TIA,

Stu