Rake is a Ruby make-like utility using standard Ruby syntax for the
build specification file.

It has the following features:

- Rakefiles (rake's version of Makefiles) are completely defined in standard
  Ruby syntax. No XML files to edit. No quirky Makefile syntax to worry about
  (is that a tab or a space?)
- Users can specify tasks with prerequisites.
- Rake supports rule patterns to synthesize implicit tasks.
- Rake is lightweight. It can be distributed with other projects as a single
  file. Projects that depend upon rake do not require that rake be installed on
  target systems.

WWW: http://rake.rubyforge.org