RANT(1) 						      General Commands Manual							   RANT(1)

NAME

       rant - A flexible and portable build tool.

SYNOPSIS

       rant [OPTION] ... [TARGET] ...

DESCRIPTION

       Striking features

       * Defining custom tasks.

       * Automated packaging, testing and RDoc generation for Ruby
	 applications and libraries.

       * Creation of a monolithic script tailored to the needs of a specific
	 project which can be used instead of an Rant installation - users
	 don't need to install Rant. [See man rant-import]

       * Creating gzipped tar and zip archives -- without installing
	 additional software.

       * Optional recognition of file changes based on MD5 checksums instead
	 of file modification times.

       * Dependency checking for C/C++ source files (integrated makedepend
	 replacement).

       * Primitive support for compiling C# sources with csc, cscc and mcs.

       Startup

       On  startup,  rant  will  look  for a file called Rantfile , rantfile or root.rant which contains the build specification (which in fact is
       valid Ruby code). After reading the Rantfile(s), rant will execute the following tasks:

       If at least one target was given on the commandline:

       rant will execute all tasks necessary to build all targets given on the commandline.

       else:

       rant tries to build the target called "default". If no task with this name exists, rant invokes the first defined task.

       If you want to know which task(s) will be invoked when no target is given on the commandline, run rant with the -T option. Example:

	 $ rant -T
	 rant		    # => test
	 rant package	    # Create packages for distribution.
	 rant doc	    # Generate documentation.
	 rant publish-docs  # Publish html docs on make.rubyfore.org.
			    #	Note: scp will prompt for rubyforge password.
	 rant test	    # Run basic tests.

       The first line always shows the target that will be built if no target argument is given. In this case, it would be the test target.

OPTIONS

	 --help 			  -h
		    Print a help message and exit.

	 --version			  -V
		    Print version of Rant and exit.

	 --verbose			  -v
		    Print more messages to stderr.

	 --quiet			  -q
		    Don't print commands.

	 --err-commands
		    Print failed commands and their exit status.

	 --directory DIRECTORY		  -C DIRECTORY
		    Run rant in DIRECTORY.

	 --cd-parent			  -c
		    With this option, Rant starts to search for an Rantfile in the
		    current working directory as usual, but if it doesn't find one,
		    it changes to the parent directory and looks there for an
		    Rantfile. This is repeated until an Rantfile is found or the
		    working directory is the root directory of the filesystem.

	 --look-up			  -u
		    Look in parent directories for root Rantfile.

	 --rantfile RANTFILE		  -f RANTFILE
		    Process RANTFILE instead of standard rantfiles.
		    Multiple files may be specified by repeating this option.

	 --force-run TARGET		  -a TARGET
		    Force rebuild of TARGET and all dependencies.

	 --dry-run			  -n
		    Print the names of the tasks that would be executed instead
		    of actually executing task actions.

	 --tasks			  -T
		    Show a list of all described tasks and exit.

HOMEPAGE

       <http://rant.rubyforge.org/>

AUTHOR

       rant developed by Stefan Lang <langstefan@gmx.at>

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright (C) 2005  Stefan Lang <langstefan@gmx.at>

SEE ALSO

       rant-import(1)

								September 17, 2006							   RANT(1)