Question

I would like to write rake tasks to customize tests. For example, to run unit tests, I created a file with the following code and saved it as lib/tasks/test.rake:

task :do_unit_tests do
  cd #{Rails.root} 
  rake test:units
end

Running rake do_unit_tests throws an error: can't convert Hash into String.

Working in Rails 3.0.7 and using built-in unit test framework.

Thanks.

Answer 1

There is no need to cd. You can simply…

task :do_unit_tests do
  Rake::Task['test:units'].invoke
end

But if you really want to cd, that’s how you call shell instructions:

task :do_unit_tests do
  sh "cd #{Rails.root}"
  Rake::Task['test:units'].invoke
end

Well, in fact there is a shorter version. The cd instruction have a special alias as Chris mentioned in the other answer, so you can just…

task :do_unit_tests do
  cd Rails.root
  Rake::Task['test:units'].invoke
end

If you want to go further, I recommend Jason Seifer’s Rake Tutorial and Martin Fowler’s Using the Rake Build Language articles. Both are great.