rakefile

If you just need to perform a simple script like creating a file, you can simply use a Ruby script without creating a rake task. # file origin.rb target = “target.rb” content = <<-RUBY puts “I’m the target!” RUBY File.open(target, “w+”) do |f| f.write(content) end And you can execute the file with $ ruby origin.rb

If by described you mean defined, rake -W is your friend. Example: $ rake -W db:create => rake db:create /path/to/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/activerecord-3.1.11/lib/active_record/railties/databases.rake:39:in `block in <top (required)>’ Just found this out today 🙂