rake-file-content

By default, rake's file tasks determine dependencies and requirements by file modification date. This gem makes it possible to compute requirements by file contents. It's a little slower in the best case, but avoids many correctness pitfalls that a date-only implementation suffers from.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'rake-file-content'

And then execute:

$ bundle install

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install rake-file-content

You can simply replace the file Rake DSL method with file_content. It behaves the same, but will output a a .content_hash file with the same name next to the output. This file will be used to determine if the task is needed in the future. It will be triggered if the hashes change.

A potential gotcha with standard rake file is when you remove dependencies. At this point, your file may need to be rebuilt, but since file has no memory between rake invocations, it will not be invoked. A file_content task will.

Internally, file_content will work with any rake task that responds to content_hash. This gem adds this to file tasks, and the rake-remote-file does it too, just in case that's of interest.

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake test to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and the created tag, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/mattmassicotte/rake-file-content. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the code of conduct.

Everyone interacting in the rake-file-content project's codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists is expected to follow the code of conduct.