Task directory precedence

[ysmilda]

Description

I expected/hoped that defining a dir for a task would mean that any command (e.g cmds, calling other tasks, or dynamic vars) would be executed with that directory as a base. The same goes for including a Taskfile with a dir entry.

But this task definition shows that vars and subcommands are executed against the directory the Taskfile was found in. The same goes for includes with a dir entry set, these are also executed against the parent Taskfiles directory.

  one:
    dir: some/path
    cmds:
      - echo "{{.dir}}"
      - pwd
      - task: two
    vars:
      dir: 
        sh: pwd
  
  two:
    cmds:
      - pwd

This makes it difficult to define reusable tasks which act on the directory of the calling task.

If this is the intended functionality, could a flag be added to allow the behaviour that I was expecting?

Version

3.45.5

Operating system

macOS

Experiments Enabled

No response

[mjpieters]

Isn't this what the TASKFILE_DIR variable (and friends) is for?

I may be misunderstanding the purpose of the dir setting and variables, however.

[ysmilda]

Still experimenting with these variables and it seems TASK_DIR solves most of the issues I had. The one thing it doesn't seem to help with is the calling of another task. The called task is not executed within the specified dir from the calling task, but in the TASKFILE_DIR.

This is probably the intended functionality, so than my request would be to add an option to allow subtasks to be executed relative to the directory of the caller.

[trulede]

Try ...

  one:
    dir: some/path
    cmds:
      - pwd
      - task: two
        vars:
          CALLER: '{{.TASK_DIR}}'
  
  two:
    dir: '{{.CALLER}}/foo'
    cmds:
      - pwd
     

... you might get lucky.

[trulede]

Task is working as expected. The example I've provided demonstrates how to influence that behaviour.

Please reopen the issue if you still encounter problems. Provide a working minimal example and capture the verbose output from task to assist in debugging.