invoking-rake-tasks-multiple-times.md

Invoking Rake Tasks Multiple Times

I have a rake task, build, that builds a single record for development purposes. I want a supplemental rake task, build:all, that builds a bunch of different records. To keep things dry, build:all should just invoke build a number of times.

namespace :build do
  task :all do
    predefined_list.each do |data|
      Rake::Task["build"].invoke(data)
    end
  end
end

This doesn't work though. No matter how many items are in the list, the build task only seems to get run once. This is because by default tasks can only be invoked once in a given context. To get around this, the task needs to be reenabled after each invocation.

namespace :build do
  task :all do
    predefined_list.each do |data|
      Rake::Task["build"].invoke(data)
      Rake::Task["build"].reenable
    end
  end
end