I ran into trouble when I tried turning rake into something it is not. Rake is a build program designed for build-like tasks; rake is not a platform for general-purpose task libraries. Given it’s design goals, rake very sensibly does not facilitate extensive documentation (who needs it to compile something),  inputs (although this has changed somewhat), configuration, testing, or distribution.

It’s also a dependency-based system; workflows constructed by rake are synthesized in reverse — it’ll be you, not your program, that gets forked when you try to make an imperative workflow. It’s simply the nature of rake! Rake is an excellent build program, but these types of things are in a different domain.

Tap (Task Application)

Tap was originally designed as a simple workflow engine, but it’s evolved into a general-purpose framework for creating configurable, distributable task libraries. Tap tasks can be defined in much the same way as a Rake task:

  # Goodnight::manifest your basic goodnight moon task
  # Prints the input with a configurable message.
  Tap.task 'goodnight', {:message=> 'goodnight'} do |task, input|
    task.log task.message, input
    "#{task.message} #{input}"
  end

Tap pulls documentation out of task declarations to generate manifests:

  % tap run -T
  sample:
    goodnight # your basic goodnight moon task
  tap:
    dump # the default dump task
    rake # run rake tasks

And help:

  % tap run -- goodnight --help
  Goodnight -- your basic goodnight moon task
  ------------------------------------------------------------------
    Says goodnight with a configurable message.
  ------------------------------------------------------------------
  usage: tap run -- goodnight NAME

  configurations:
          --message MESSAGE a goodnight message

  options:
      -h, --help Print this help
          --name NAME Specify a name
          --use FILE Loads inputs from file

Tasks are immediately available to run with inputs and configurations:

  % tap run -- goodnight moon
    I[00:09:55] goodnight moon

  % tap run -- goodnight moon --message hello
    I[00:10:01] hello moon

Task declarations define classes which naturally support namespaces, subclassing and testing.   When the shorthand declaration is not enough, task classes can be defined in the standard way:

  # Hello::manifest a hello world task
  # A more complicated hello world task illustrating
  # config blocks and a full task class definition.
  #
  class Hello < Tap::Task

    config :greeting, 'hello', &c.string    # a greeting string
    config :reverse, false, &c.flag         # maps to a flag

    def process(name)
      message = reverse ? greeting.reverse : greeting

      log message, name
      "#{message} #{name} result"
    end
  end

  task = Hello.new
  task.process('world')     # => "hello world result"
  task.reverse = true
  task.process('world')     # => "olleh world result"
  task.greeting = :symbol   # !> ValidationError

Configurations map to methods and can utilize a validation/transformation block.  Tap defines a number of common blocks (ex c.integer, c.regexp, etc.) that may also imply metadata for the command line (ex c.flag):

  % tap run -- hello world --reverse
  I[20:04:33]              olleh world

Distribution

Tap supports distribution of tasks as gems. To illustrate, say we installed the sample_tasks gem. Now our manifest looks like this:

  % tap run -T
  sample:
    goodnight   # your basic goodnight moon task
    hello       # a hello world task
  sample_tasks:
    concat      # concatenate files with formatting
    copy        # copies files
    grep        # search for lines matching a pattern
    print_tree  # print a directory tree
  tap:
    dump        # the default dump task
    rake        # run rake tasks

Tap checks the installed gems for a ‘tap.yml’ configuration file or a ‘tapfile.rb’ task file; any gems with one (or both) of these files gets pulled into the execution environment. Now tasks can be specified either by a short name when there isn’t a name conflict (ex goodnight, print_tree), or by a full name that includes the environment (ex sample:goodnight, sample_tasks:print_tree).

  % tap run -- sample_tasks:print_tree .
  .
  |- Rakefile
  |- lib
  |- sample.gemspec
  |- tapfile.rb
  `- test
      |- tap_test_helper.rb
      |- tap_test_suite.rb
      `- tapfile_test.rb

Not bad, eh?

Workflows and the Roadmap

Tap support simple workflows in the imperative style. Tasks can be assigned an on_complete block that executes when the task completes, allowing results to be examined and new tasks to be enqued as needed.

  app = Tap::App.instance
  t1 = Tap.task('t1') {|t| 'hellO'}
  t2 = Tap.task('t2') {|t, input| input + ' woRld' }
  t3 = Tap.task('t3') {|t, input| input.downcase }
  t4 = Tap.task('t4') {|t, input| input.upcase }
  t5 = Tap.task('t5') {|t, input| input + "!" }

  # sequence t1, t2
  app.sequence(t1, t2)

  # fork t2 results to t3 and t4
  app.fork(t2, t3, t4)

  # unsynchronized merge of t3 and t4 into t5
  app.merge(t5, t3, t4)

  app.enq(t1)
  app.run

  app.results(t5)       # => ["hello world!", "HELLO WORLD!"]

True support for workflows from the command line is lacking right now, but it will be coming soon. Here’s a short list of what else is planned:

• Global Rake Tasks (hopefully!). I should be able to find and load rakefiles using the Tap execution environment. Tap already allows you to incorporate local rake tasks into a workflow using the ‘rake’ task.
• Tap server. In a small-group environment where some people are computer savvy and others aren’t, it would be really useful to serve up your tasks using a web interface.
• More test support. Tap provides several modules for testing tasks and supporting common types of tasks (ex file transformation tasks). Currently the modules are a bit incomplete, and they’re only geared towards Test::Unit. I’d like to add support for RSpec in the future.