Drop into an IRB session from within a rake task

Rakefile

desc "Start an interactive console"
task :console do
  require "irb"
  require "irb/completion"
  require "pp"
  ARGV.clear
  IRB.setup(nil)
  IRB.conf[:SAVE_HISTORY] = 100
  IRB.conf[:HISTORY_FILE] = "#{ENV['HOME']}/.irb_history"
  irb = IRB::Irb.new
  irb.context.inspect_mode = IRB::Inspector.new(proc{ |v| v.pretty_inspect.chomp })
  IRB.conf[:MAIN_CONTEXT] = irb.context
  trap "SIGINT" do
    irb.signal_handle
  end
  begin
    catch :IRB_EXIT do
      irb.eval_input
    end
  ensure
    IRB.irb_at_exit
  end
end