In Sprouts, a Task is referring to a Rake[http://rake.rubyforge.org/] Task.

Rake is the automated build to written in Ruby. This tool is similar to Ant[http://ant.apache.org/] and Make[http://www.gnu.org/software/make/] if you're familiar with those technologies.

The main thing that differentiates Rake from it's competitors is the fact that Rake tasks are defined and configured in Ruby code rather than XML or C. This lets us more easily avoid repetition throughout a rakefile, and we gain the full power of the Ruby language to apply to our build scripts.

Essentially, Rake allows us to write and maintain much smaller, more digestible build scripts.

To learn more about Rake, check out Martin Fowler's seminal article[http://martinfowler.com/articles/rake.html] on the subject.

At the time of this writing, Sprouts makes the following Rake tasks available:
* Core Sprout::SFTPTask
* Core Sprout::ZipTask
* Core Sprout::LibraryTask
* As3Bundle Sprout::AsDocTask
* As3Bundle Sprout::AsUnitTask
* As3Bundle Sprout::COMPCTask
* As3Bundle Sprout::MXMLCTask
* As2Bundle Sprout::MTASCTask
* As2Bundle Sprout::SWFMillTask