Search for Taskfiles in parent directories

[Chi-teck]

Is it possible to run Task commands from child directories without specifying a path to the Taskfile explicitly (task -t ../.././Taskfile.yml)?

[andreynering]

Hi @Chi-teck, and thanks for opening this issue!

This is a good idea indeed: searching for parent directories if a Taskfile isn't found in the current one.

I plan to work on this eventually, but contributions are also welcome.

[Chi-teck]

The most noticeable example of such feature is Git. You don't have to cd to project root repository to execute Git commands.

[Chi-teck]

Meanwhile the following Bash function can be used as a workaround.

#
# Task wrapper that searches for task file recursively.
#
function task {

  # Do not proceed if '--taskfile' option was supplied.
  for i in "$@"; do
    if [[ $i == -t* || $i == --taskfile=* ]]; then
      command task "$@"
      return $?
    fi
  done

  local DIR=$(pwd)
  while true; do
    if [[ $DIR == '/' ]]; then
      command task "$@"
      return $?
    fi

    if [[ -f $DIR/Taskfile.yml ]]; then
      command task --taskfile="$DIR"/Taskfile.yml "$@"
      return $?
    fi

    DIR=$(dirname "$DIR")
  done
}

[marco-m]

Two example of tools with this behavior:

• the scons build tool, see the -u or --up flag in the scons man page https://scons.org/doc/production/HTML/scons-man.html.
• the summon secret provider, see Option to traverse up the directory hierarchy looking for secrets.yml cyberark/summon#122

[ibes]

Would there be a way - similar to the bash file - where I can tell for my project to always attach my project taskfile in the command?

Hm - likely the flaw on this way is, that the bash command needs to be global or can only be used by on project.
As otherwise: How does the script know if it is supposed to do stuff.

There could be a config file for the bash script.

If somewhere within this path (=project), add taskfile config x
If somewhere within this path (=project), add taskfile config y

Not sure if that really is a solution, but maybe it's easy enough.

Would love to see this feature.
Unfortunately I am not skilled to contribute.

[marco-m]

Nice one! Thanks!