Ruby on Rails/Built-In Rails Tools/What is Rake anyway?

Ruby on Rails Built-In Rails Tools/Make a generator Built-In Rails Tools/Convenient Rake tasks Rake is a Ruby build tool like make and Ant. Rakefiles (rake’s version of Makefiles) are completely defined in standard Ruby syntax. No XML files to edit. No quirky Makefile syntax to worry about (is that a tab or a space?) Users can specify tasks with prerequisites. Rake supports rule patterns to synthesize implicit tasks. Flexible FileLists that act like arrays but know about manipulating file names and paths. A library of prepackaged tasks to make building rakefiles easier.