Alias of task name in Rake

Question

When I need to alias some task's name, how should I do it?

For example, how do I turn the task name:

rake db:table rake db:create rake db:schema rake db:migration 

to:

rake db:t rake db:c rake db:s rake db:m 

---

Editing after getting the answer:

def alias_task(tasks)     tasks.each do |new_name, old_name|         task new_name, [*Rake.application[old_name].arg_names] => [old_name]     end end  alias_task [     [:ds, :db_schema],     [:dc, :db_create],     [:dr, :db_remove] ] 

Answer 1

Why do you need an alias? You may introduce a new task without any code, but with a prerequisite to the original task.

namespace :db do   task :table do     puts "table"   end   #kind of alias   task :t => :table end 

This can be combined with parameters:

require 'rake' desc 'My original task' task :original_task, [:par1, :par2] do |t, args|   puts "#{t}: #{args.inspect}" end  #Alias task. #Parameters are send to prerequisites, if the keys are identic. task :alias_task, [:par1, :par2] => :original_task 

To avoid to search for the parameters names you may read the parameters with arg_names:

#You can get the parameters of the original  task :alias_task2, *Rake.application[:original_task].arg_names, :needs => :original_task 

Combine it to a define_alias_task-method:

def define_alias_task(alias_task, original)   desc "Alias #{original}"   task alias_task, *Rake.application[original].arg_names, :needs => original end define_alias_task(:alias_task3, :original_task) 

Tested with ruby 1.9.1 and rake-0.8.7.

Hmmm, well, I see that's more or less exactly the same solution RyanTM already posted some hours ago.

Answer 2

Here is some code someone wrote to do it: https://gist.github.com/232966

def alias_task(name, old_name)   t = Rake::Task[old_name]   desc t.full_comment if t.full_comment   task name, *t.arg_names do |_, args|     # values_at is broken on Rake::TaskArguments     args = t.arg_names.map { |a| args[a] }     t.invoke(args)   end end