Overriding rails' default rake tasks

Question

I have a Rails 2.2 project in which I want to override the functionality of the rake db:test:prepare task. I thought this would work, but it doesn't:

#lib/tasks/db.rake namespace :db do   namespace :test do     desc "Overridden version of rails' standard db:test:prepare task since the schema dump used in that can't handle DB enums"       task :prepare => [:environment] do       puts "doing db:structure:dump"       Rake::Task['db:structure:dump'].invoke       puts "doing db:test:clone_structure"       Rake::Task['db:test:clone_structure'].invoke     end      end end 

I get the standard task's behaviour. If I change the name of the task to :prepare2 and then do rake db:test:prepare2, then it works fine. The natural conclusion I draw from this is that my rake tasks are being defined before the built-in Rails ones, so mine is overridden by the standard :prepare task.

Can anyone see how I can fix this? I'd rather override it than have to use a new task. Thanks, max

Answer 1

If you define a rake task that already exists, its execution gets appended to the original task's execution; both tasks will be executed.

If you want to redefine a task you need to clear the original task first:

Rake::Task["db:test:prepare"].clear 

It's also useful to note that once a task has been executed in rake, it won't execute again even if you call it again. This is by design but you can call .reset on a task to allow it to be run again.

Answer 2

You have to remove the default task before adding your own:

Rake.application.instance_variable_get('@tasks').delete('db:test:prepare') namespace 'db' do   namespace 'test' do     task 'prepare' do       # ...     end   end end 

A fairly popular idiom is to create a convenience method called remove_task like so:

Rake::TaskManager.class_eval do   def remove_task(task_name)     @tasks.delete(task_name.to_s)   end end  def remove_task(task_name)   Rake.application.remove_task(task_name) end 

(Source: drnic/newgem)