From: ara.t.howard@...
Date: 2007-03-21T03:59:17+09:00
Subject: Re: Passing data to rant/rake for a customized build?

On Wed, 21 Mar 2007, Phrogz wrote:

> Summary: How do I use a single rantfile or rakefile to perform some
> varying commands based on data that I want to pass to it?
>
> Background: My company makes a Windows-based middleware product
> helping next-gen game developers create UIs. In the process of
> creating the UI, our tool gathers information about the raw 3D models
> and 2D images and data files and so forth needed to create the end
> result. When the artist presses the "Preview" button, the application
> needs to essentially perform a 'build' process. Various assets are
> conditioned (going from bloated formats to runtime-appropriate
> binaries) using various standalone applications. Only those resources
> that have changed want to be conditioned, and thus some dependency
> management is needed to do as little work as possible as quickly as
> possible. Depending on the target platform, some files may need to be
> copied over the network to the PS3 or 360 dev kit. The final 'product'
> of the build is launching the preview application and passing it some
> descriptor to show the end result.
>
> The process changes slightly based on:
> * debug/release mode,
> * the target platform to preview on,
> * the actual project being worked on and the assets it contains
> ...but otherwise is the same for every project file, for a given
> customer. Each customer, however, may change the process entirely.
>
>
> Question: I'm looking at Rant (or perhaps Rake) for this right now.[1]
> The idea is that the application would run a Rant target (perhaps
> based on a combination of debug/release and target platform), which
> would kick off all the conditioners as appropriate and finally launch
> the viewer application.
>
> My question is...how do I pass data to a rantfile? The command line
> for rant is just:
>  rant [-f Rantfile] [Options] [targets]
> which gives me no way of simply passing along the name of the project
> and other assets from our tool.

why not via the environment? you may also be able to pass stdin

   rant rantifle < stdin

and then have a 'configuration' task, which all other tasks depend on, which
does something like

   Config = YAML.load STDIN.read

this stdin bit is a wild ass guess, however.

cheers.


-a
-- 
be kind whenever possible... it is always possible.
- the dalai lama