Rant is a flexible build tool. The equivalent to a Makefile for make is the Rantfile, which is actually a valid Ruby script that is read in by the rant command. It currently features automated testing, packaging, and RDoc generation for Ruby applications and libraries, creation of gzipped tar and zip archives on all supported platforms without additional software, recognition of file changes based on MD5 checksums, dependency checking for C/C++ source files (makedepend is not required), and more. It can generate a script tailored to the needs of a specific project, which can be used instead of an Rant installation so that users aren't dependent on Rant.
