In these days I’m moving my build scripts from NAnt to Rake. The main reason for doing this is that I’m moving from external dsl to an internal dsl. Internal DSLs are often the most approachable form of DSLs to write. Unlike external DSLs you don’t need to learn about grammars and language parsing, unlike language workbenches you don’t need any special tools. With internal DSLs you work in your regular language environment.

This means that now I build my build scritps just with ruby. I believe this is a good way to learn this nice language. Rake in fact is nothing more that a Ruby library.

Getting started with Rake and .NET is very easy:

• Download the Ruby for windows one click installer.
• Install it
• Create a file Rakefile.rb (type is text file)
• Type:

  task :default => :build
  
  task :build => [:compile, :test, :deploy] 
  
  task :compile do
    params = '/t:Rebuild /nologo /v:m /p:Configuration=Release src\demo.sln'
    msbuid = 'C:\\WINDOWS\\Microsoft.NET\\Framework\\v3.5\\MSBuild.exe'
    sh "#{msbuid} #{params}"
  end
  
  task :test do
   runner = 'tools\\Gallio\\Gallio.Echo.exe'
   assemblies = FileList["src/**/bin/Release/*.Fixture.exe"]
   extension = '' #'/e:TeamCityExtension,Gallio.TeamCityIntegration'
   sh "#{runner} #{assemblies} #{extension}"
  end
  
  task :deploy do
      sh "echo Task not yet implemented!"
  end

• Open a command prompt (Start->Run->Cmd)

• Type: cd c:\[my RakeFile.rb folder] (obviously put your own path in)

• Type: rake

• Done!

As you can see here above with rake there is no need to learn some crazy xml syntax. Whit this little script I compile my solution and run all unit tests. No need to write xml, only some ruby code.

Nothing more nothing less.