From: Ryan Davis <ryand-ruby@...>
Date: 2010-09-11T05:18:40+09:00
Subject: Re: Rake task dependencies question


On Sep 10, 2010, at 07:23 , Andrew Wagner wrote:

> Quick question about rake task dependencies. Suppose I have the following:
> 
> task :prepare_to_fight => :has_weapons do
> ...
> end
> 
> task :attack_with_gun => :prepare_to_fight do
> ...
> end
> 
> task :attack_with_sword => :prepare_to_fight do
> ...
> end
> 
> Now, by default, if I run "rake attack_with_gun attack_with_sword", it
> recognizes that "prepare_to_fight" has already been called when it goes to
> run the second task. So it saves itself the trouble and skips it.
> 
> My question is, is there some way to override that? That is, I want to
> prepare_to_fight each time, but only define it in one place. Note also that
> :prepare_to_fight has a dependency, which I only want to mention in one
> place, so I can't just put this in a method.

I think it is safe to say that what you've described is NOT a task dependency anymore, and is just a reusable unit of code. In ruby, that's just a method:

def prepare_to_fight
  # ...
end

task :attack_with_gun do
  prepare_to_fight
end

task :attack_with_sword do
  prepare_to_fight
end