How do I return early from a rake task?

A Rake task is basically a block. A block, except lambdas, doesn't support return but you can skip to the next statement using next which in a rake task has the same effect of using return in a method.

task :foo do
  puts "printed"
  next
  puts "never printed"
end

Or you can move the code in a method and use return in the method.

task :foo do
  do_something
end

def do_something
  puts "startd"
  return
  puts "end"
end

I prefer the second choice.

You can use abort(message) from inside the task to abort that task with a message.