class Rake::RDocTask

NOTE: Rake::RDocTask is deprecated in favor of RDoc:Task which is included in RDoc 2.4.2+. Use require ‘rdoc/task’ to require it.

Create a documentation task that will generate the RDoc files for a project.

The RDocTask will create the following targets:

rdoc

Main task for this RDOC task.

:clobber_rdoc

Delete all the rdoc files. This target is automatically added to the main clobber target.

:rerdoc

Rebuild the rdoc files from scratch, even if they are not out of date.

Simple Example:

Rake::RDocTask.new do |rd|
  rd.main = "README.rdoc"
  rd.rdoc_files.include("README.rdoc", "lib/**/*.rb")
end

The rd object passed to the block is an RDocTask object. See the attributes list for the RDocTask class for available customization options.

Specifying different task names ↑

You may wish to give the task a different name, such as if you are generating two sets of documentation. For instance, if you want to have a development set of documentation including private methods:

Rake::RDocTask.new(:rdoc_dev) do |rd|
  rd.main = "README.doc"
  rd.rdoc_files.include("README.rdoc", "lib/**/*.rb")
  rd.options << "--all"
end

The tasks would then be named :rdoc_dev, :clobber_rdoc_dev, and :rerdoc_dev.

If you wish to have completely different task names, then pass a Hash as first argument. With the :rdoc, :clobber_rdoc and :rerdoc options, you can customize the task names to your liking. For example:

Rake::RDocTask.new(:rdoc => "rdoc", :clobber_rdoc => "rdoc:clean", :rerdoc => "rdoc:force")

This will create the tasks :rdoc, :rdoc_clean and :rdoc:force.