Rails - Sep 2005 - Rake threading

Neat little trick for any rakefiles you might have lying around:

class Task
  def invoke
    if $trace
      puts "** Invoke #{name} #{format_trace_flags}"
    end
    return if @already_invoked
      @already_invoked = true
      threads = @prerequisites.collect{|p|
			Thread.new(p){|r| Task[r].invoke} }
      threads.each{|t| t.join}
      execute if needed?
  end
end

This assumes that the order of prerequisites for a given task is
unimportant.  Really nice if you''ve got a lot of IO-bound tasks.  Like,
say, subversion exports, or database dumps.

Hardly groundbreaking, I know, but I like it :-)

-- 
Alex