Rake task outside of namespace

Question

I have a rake file set up like so:

require 'rake'

namespace :setup do
  puts "I'm in setup"
  task :create do
    puts "I'm in create"
  end
end

task :run do
  puts "I'm in run"
end

If I run rake setup:create I get the expected:

I'm in setup
I'm in create

However, if I run rake run I get:

I'm in setup
I'm in run

From what I can tell in the guides, this is unexpected as stated here:

When looking up a task name, rake will start with the current namespace and attempt to find the name there. If it fails to find a name in the current namespace, it will search the parent namespaces until a match is found (or an error occurs if there is no match).

Wouldn't that assume rake starts at the current namespace and then moves on looking for something. In my example, I don't provide a current namesapce yet it jumps into setup even though all I gave it was run.

What am I missing?

Answer 1

The line puts "I'm in setup" isn’t part of any task – it will be executed whatever task you specify, even a non-existent one, as the file is being parsed (strictly speaking not when Ruby is parsing the file, but as it is being executed and setting up the rake tasks):

$ rake foo
I'm in setup
rake aborted!
Don't know how to build task 'foo'

(See full trace by running task with --trace)

Only after the file has been read does the task lookup take place, and that is what that quote is referring to.

If you want some common code for all the tasks of a namespace you will need to create a task for it and make all other tasks in the namespace depend on it, e.g.:

namespace :setup do
  task :create => :default do
    puts "I'm in create"
  end

  task :default do
    puts "I'm in setup"
  end
end