Run a rake task in a separate process in your Rails app

gistfile1.rb

desc 'Execute a task in the background'
task :background, :task do |t, args|
  rake_path = `which rake`.chomp
  app_path = Dir.pwd
  cmd = "#{rake_path} #{args.task} --trace --rakefile #{app_path}/Rakefile >> #{app_path}/log/rake.log 2>&1 &"
  puts 'Executing:'
  puts "    #{cmd}"
  system cmd
end