[Rake-devel] backwards dependency?

[Jim Weirich]

TRANS wrote:
 > I'm confused. I'm trying to alter the dependencies of a premade rake
 > task, and while it accepts it, it's actully running the dependcy after
 > the task rather than before it. With this:
 >
 >   Rake::GemPackageTask.new(spec) do |pkg|
 >     ...
 >   end
 >
 >   # Don't show the clobber task, just always clobber when
 >   # creating packages. Maybe in future ask to make sure.
 >   Rake::Task['clobber_package'].comment = nil
 >   Rake::Task['repackage'].comment = nil
 >   task :package => [:clobber_package]
 >
 > Shouldn't it invoke clobber_package BEFORE package? I ran it with --
 > trace and it's clearly doing the opposite. What's up?

It does.  But the package task body is entirely empty.  So after it has 
satisfied all of its other dependencies (which do the work of building 
the packaages), then it invokes its last dependency (your 
clobber_package).  Finally it runs the body (which is empty).

The trick is to get clobber_package to be first in the list of package's 
dependencies.  Just move the task :package line to be before the 
creation of the Rake::GemPackageTask.

-- 
-- Jim Weirich      jim at weirichhouse.org     http://onestepback.org
-- In theory, practice and theory are the same.
-- In practice, they are different.