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I've done some basic googling and haven't found any compelling reasons to choose Jake over Cake for my Node.js build process (mostly just compiling *.coffee to *.js in the correct folders). Can anyone provide a few quick bullet points of why one would choose Jake or Cake over the other?

If applicable: I am coming in from a Java, Grails, and Ruby on Rails developer point of view so I am familiar with Ant, mvn, and Gradle, Rake, etc...

Peter Mortensen
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techie.brandon
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  • I don't submit this as an 'answer' since I am not directly speaking to these tools - but when I came in from .Net I was used to the sophisticated *ake tools and thought I needed them. I took a look at what I needed though and I realized Makefiles with simple shell scripting does everything I need without the extra luggage. I know everyone has different reqs, but wanted to share my experience. Good luck! – SonOfNun Oct 09 '12 at 02:07
  • Yeah, everyone likes their own blend the best, I appreciate the response. I myself was very content with ant, but there is some quick wins for a particular language/framework that one can usually get when using a tailored build tool, which is really what I am trying to derive out of this question (what parts stand out on the two tools) – techie.brandon Oct 09 '12 at 14:10

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Jake is a lot similar to the Rake tool and is a real flexible build tool. The documentation gives some nice examples of how to create and execute various tasks. Tasks can depend on each other, and you can also pass properties to indicate from command line to build script. I am using Jake for my project and really love its simplicity.

Cake seems to a build tool for CoffeeScript. So, if you are using CoffeeScript then it may be a good tool for your project.

Another tool I have hearing about these days is gruntjs. Like Jake, this is a task-based tool, but it comes bundled with lot of tasks that you can start using quickly.

Peter Mortensen
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himanshu
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  • Thanks for the lead on gruntjs, will certainly review for the default tasks. Anything I don't have to write is seen as a boon. – techie.brandon Oct 09 '12 at 14:12
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    A bit of a follow-up; Been using gruntjs (via yeoman) and have loved it. Great community built up around the tooling already as well. – techie.brandon Oct 17 '13 at 14:36