Installing Rake

As Rake is a Ruby library, you should first install Ruby on the system if you don't have it installed already. The installation process is different for each operating system. However, we will see the installation example only for the Debian operating system family.

Just open the terminal and write the following installation command:

$ sudo apt-get install ruby

Rake is included in the Ruby core as Ruby 1.9, so you don't have to install it as a separate gem. However, if you still use Ruby 1.8 or an older version, you will have to install Rake as a gem. Use the following command to install the gem:

$ gem install rake

To check if you have installed it correctly, open your terminal and type the following command:

$ rake --version

This should return the installed Rake version.

The next sign that Rake is installed and is working correctly is an error that you see after typing the rake command in the terminal:

$ mkdir ~/test-rake
$ cd ~/test-rake
$ rake
rake aborted!
No Rakefile found (looking for: rakefile, Rakefile, rakefile.rb, Rakefile.rb)
(See full trace by running task with --trace)