---
title: Rake instrumentation
source: https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/apm/agents/ruby-agent/background-jobs/rake-instrumentation
---

The New Relic Ruby agent has opt-in support for instrumenting Rake tasks. This requires:

-   Rake version 10.0.0 or higher
-   Ruby agent version 3.13.0 or higher

To instrument Rake tasks, [specify the tasks by name](#enabling-rake-support) in your `newrelic.yml` file.

## Enable Rake support [#enabling-rake-support]

To instrument your app's Rake tasks, add the names of the target tasks to the `rake.tasks` element in your `newrelic.yml` file. The Ruby agent matches these names against your active tasks using string regex.

**Example: Instrumenting two Rake tasks**

For example, to instrument the Rake tasks `deploy` and `deploy:all`, add the following to your `newrelic.yml` file:

```yml
rake:
  tasks: ["deploy", "deploy:all"]
```

Since task name matching is with regex, you can instrument all of your app's Rake tasks by using a wildcard regex like `[".+"]`. However, this will not include Rake tasks that are in your deny list by default from the [`autostart.denylisted_rake_tasks`](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/apm/agents/ruby-agent/configuration/ruby-agent-configuration/#autostart-denylisted_rake_tasks) configuration setting, such as `db:migrate`.

-   To include any Rake tasks that are in your deny list by default, include them in your customized deny list.
-   To ensure the tasks are instrumented before they run if you are using Rails but your Rake task does not require the Rails environment, add `require 'tasks/newrelic'` to the top of the Rake tasks.

## Capture Rake job arguments [#capture-rake-arguments]

By default Rake job arguments are not captured. To capture Rake job arguments, use:

```yml
attributes.include: job.rake.*
```