Node-Jake -- JavaScript build tool for Node.js

Installing

Prerequisites: Node-Jake requires Node.js. (http://nodejs.org/)

Get Node-Jake:

git clone git://github.com/mde/node-jake.git

Build Node-Jake:

cd node-jake && make && sudo make install

Installing with npm

npm install jake

Or, get the code, and npm link in the code root.

Basic usage

jake [-f Jakefile] [-C directory] [--version] target (commands/options ...)

Description

Jake is a simple JavaScript build program with capabilities similar to the regular make or rake command.

Jake has the following features:
    * Jakefiles are in standard JavaScript syntax
    * Tasks with prerequisites
    * Namespaces for tasks

Options

--version                   Display the program version.

-f *FILE*
--jakefile *FILE*           Use FILE as the Jakefile.

-C *DIRECTORY*
--directory *DIRECTORY*     Change to DIRECTORY before running tasks.

-T
--tasks                     Display the tasks, with descriptions, then exit.

Jakefile syntax

Use task to define tasks. Call it with three arguments:

task(name, dependencies, handler);

Where name is the string name of the task, dependencies is an array of the dependencies, and handler is a function to run for the task.

Use desc to add a string description of the task.

Here's an example:

var sys = require('sys');

desc('This is the default task.');
task('default', [], function (params) {
  sys.puts('This is the default task.');
  sys.puts(sys.inspect(arguments));
});

Use namespace to create a namespace of tasks to perform. Call it with two arguments:

namespace(name, namespaceTasks);

Where is name is the name of the namespace, and namespaceTasks is a function with calls inside it to task or desc definining all the tasks for that namespace.

Here's an example:

var sys = require('sys');

desc('This is the default task.');
task('default', [], function () {
  sys.puts('This is the default task.');
  sys.puts(sys.inspect(arguments));
});

namespace('foo', function () {
  desc('This the foo:bar task');
  task('bar', [], function () {
    sys.puts('doing foo:bar task');
    sys.puts(sys.inspect(arguments));
  });

  desc('This the foo:baz task');
  task('baz', ['default', 'foo:bar'], function () {
    sys.puts('doing foo:baz task');
    sys.puts(sys.inspect(arguments));
  });

});

In this example, the foo:baz task depends on both the default and the foo:bar task.

Passing parameters to jake

Two kinds of parameters can be passed to Node-Jake: positional and named parameters.

Any single parameters passed to the jake command after the task name are passed along to the task handler as positional arguments. For example, with the following Jakefile:

var sys = require('sys');

desc('This is an awesome task.');
task('awesome', [], function () {
  sys.puts(sys.inspect(Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments)));
});

You could run jake like this:

jake awesome foo bar baz

And you'd get the following output:

[ 'foo', 'bar', 'baz' ]

Any paramters passed to the jake command that contain a colon (:) or equals sign (=) will be added to a keyword/value object that is passed as a final argument to the task handler.

With the above Jakefile, you could run jake like this:

jake awesome foo bar baz qux:zoobie frang:asdf

And you'd get the following output:

[ 'foo'
, 'bar'
, 'baz'
, { qux: 'zoobie', frang: 'asdf' }
]

Running jake with no arguments runs the default task.

Related projects

James Coglan's "Jake": http://github.com/jcoglan/jake

Confusingly, this is a Ruby tool for building JavaScript packages from source code.

280 North's Jake: http://github.com/280north/jake

This is also a JavaScript port of Rake, which runs on the Narwhal platform.

Author

Matthew Eernisse, mde@fleegix.org