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Rebuild the rdoc files from scratch, even if they are not out of date.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