From: Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@...>
Date: 2007-03-21T13:20:08+09:00
Subject: Re: Passing data to rant/rake for a customized build?

Phrogz wrote:
> On Mar 20, 12:45 pm, "Phrogz" <g...@refinery.com> wrote:
>> Is the best choice to have our tool write out a text file manifest of
>> all the assets of the various types, and have Rant tasks use that?
>> [This would sort of match the ability of make (or rant) to derive
>> dependencies from files with a known format (like C includes).]
>>
>> Do I build a folder structure and copy/alias all the resources into
>> known buckets and have Rant enumerate the directories? (I'd have to
>> copy the rantfile into the right spot to set the context to run with.)
>> [This would match the *.c->*.o type mentality.]
>>
>> Do I use something like ERB and have a rantfile template (editable by
>> customers) that our tool can use to dynamically customize the rantfile
>> on each preview command?
>>
>> Is the rant "gen" method (that I don't yet understand) the answer I'm
>> looking for?
> 
> I left off one other option I had thought of: setting one or more
> environment variables with the data in question before kicking off the
> build. It's nice because there's no file I/O needed, but it prevents
> the preview from being launched by anything but our tool. Command-line
> preview/nightly builds are also desirable.

You might not be aware of this, but rake accepts env vars with this syntax:

rake e1=v1 e2=v2 ... task ...

For example:

$ cat rakefile
task :bar do
   p ENV['foo']
end

$ rake foo=3 bar
(in /tmp)
"3"

Maybe rant has the same feature?

-- 
       vjoel : Joel VanderWerf : path berkeley edu : 510 665 3407