[Rant] Rant 0.4.8 released

[Stefan Lang]

== What's new in this release?

Incompatible changes:
* The filenames Rantfile.rb and rantfile.rb which
  were deprecated since the last release aren't recognized anymore.
  Use Rantfile, rantfile or root.rant instead.

Deprecated:
* The two undocumented Array methods ary.arglist and
  ary.shell_pathes are deprecated. Use sys.sp(ary)
  in Rantfiles instead.
* rant-import -v option. Use -V or --version instead.

Fixes and minor improvements:
* Fix output of rant -T for descriptions with more than two lines.
* Filelists: Same handling of files starting with a dot with all
  supported ruby versions (1.8.0 - 1.9).
* The sys.ruby method uses an absolute path to start the Ruby
  interpreter. Thus sys.ruby also works if ruby is not on the
  PATH.
* Fix for latest ruby 1.9, which renamed +fcall+ to +funcall+.
* A fix for ruby 1.8.4 preview1 regarding sys methods visibility.

New features:
* rant-import supports --zip (-z) option for zip-compression now.
* Tasks with command change recognition.
* Improved rule support.

I have also written an Rant/Rake comparison. It's available under
http://make.rubyforge.org/files/doc/rant_vs_rake_rdoc.html

== Installing Rant

You can install Rant as a RubyGem:
    % gem install --remote rant

or download the package from 
RubyForge(http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=615)
and install with install.rb:
    % ruby install.rb

== Example Rantfile

  import "command"

  var :CFLAGS => "-g -O2" # can be overridden from commandline

  gen Command, "foo", ["foo.o", "util.o"],
      "cc $[CFLAGS] -o $(name) $(prerequisites)"


The last two lines tell Rant, that the file foo depends on the files 
foo.o and util.o and that foo can be built by running the command in 
the last line ("cc …") in a subshell. If at least one of the 
following three conditions is met, foo will be rebuilt: 

1. foo doesn’t exist. 
2. foo.o or util.o changed since the last build of foo. 
3. The command (most probably CFLAGS) changed since the last build
   of foo.

== Resources

Homepage:: visit http://make.ruby-co.de
Rubyforge page:: http://rubyforge.org/projects/make/
Repository:: http://developer.berlios.de/svn/?group_id=5046

-- 
Stefan