# Rant - Flexible, Ruby based make

Similar to make, the rant command line tool reads a file called Rantfile, which contains task definitions. Unlike make, however, a Rantfile is just a valid script written in the Ruby programming language. Since Ruby comes with many useful libraries and is portable across many different operating systems, it's very easy to write portable Rantfiles.

## Striking features:

- Defining custom tasks.
- Automated packaging, testing and RDoc generation for Ruby applications and libraries.
- Creation of a monolithic script tailored to the needs of a specific project which can be used instead of an Rant installation - users don't need to install Rant.
- Creating gzipped tar and zip archives -- without installing additional software.
- Optional recognition of file changes based on MD5 checksums instead of file modification times.
- Support for compiling C# sources and resources
- Dependency checking for C/C++ source files (integrated makedepend replacement).

## Getting started

1. Install Ruby
  Issue the command: `% ruby --version`
  which prints the Ruby version number you've installed. If it isn't equal or higher to 1.8.0, get a newer version from the Ruby homepage or the One-Click Installer for Windows.
2. Install Rant
  Issue the command: `% gem install --remote rant`
  which should download and install Rant. If you don't have the gem command, download the package from RubyForge, unpack it and run `% ruby install.rb`.
3. Read the documentation
  If you want to start with the basics, continue here.
  If you want to get an overview, continue here.