CLI option --taskfile seems to be ignored

[rseichter]

Description

My attempts to specify a custom file name using --taskfile or -t result in "No Taskfile found" errors:

$ task --version
3.48.0
$ uname -v
Darwin Kernel Version 25.2.0: Tue Nov 18 21:09:34 PST 2025; root:xnu-12377.61.12~1/RELEASE_X86_64
$ ls -l *.yml
-rw-r--r-- 1 ralph staff 638 Feb 16 02:26 foo.yml
$ task --taskfile foo.yml
task: No Taskfile found at ""
task: Failed to run task "default": exit status 100

As you can see the file exists and is world-readable, so I am left with the impression that --taskfile is being ignored?

Version

3.48.0

Operating system

macOS 26.2

Experiments Enabled

No response

[trulede]

@rseichter you might experiment a little more with paths: ./foo.yml, somedir/foo.yml, /fullpath/foo.yml etc. and see if there is something particular to MacOS file system causing this. I would expect the full path to work (at least).

[rseichter]

@trulede I have tried using different file paths like you suggested, including the absolute path. The results are always the same, it does not work:

fish> task --taskfile /Users/ralph/foo.yml || echo $status
task: No Taskfile found at ""
task: Failed to run task "default": exit status 100
201

I have tried path variants in both bash and fish, by the way, on the off-chance that the behaviour might change. It does not. Possibly of interest: while task prints "exit status 100" to stderr, the actual returned value is 201 - Command execution error.

[trulede]

@rseichter this is the code (I think) that I think tries to read the file.

task/internal/fsext/fs.go

Line 122 in c4ecff7

func SearchPath(path string, possibleFilenames []string) (string, error) {

If path as set (to the value from the CLI then something in this function might indicate the reason this does not work. However, if path is not set then it would be as you suggest, somehow the parameter was not processed. A single fmt.Println(path) would indicate which case.

I don't have MacOS ... so I can't help you. But I would start looking in that area.

[rseichter]

@trulede I tried, even forked the project, but I am struggling with compiling a standalone binary. It's certainly not as simple as go build; this is a rather more complex project structure. Is there perhaps a macOS user among the developers who could help us with this issue? I am willing to assist, but if compilation is already a hurdle, it is rough going.

[trulede]

@rseichter there was a recent bug on the main branch, unreleased, which sometimes causes problems on Linux like OS. I don't think its your problem, however since your problem is a little hard to explain ... if you did have the main branch installed on your system, perhaps is was related.

If you want to try the fix (90bcbe9) its now available on main. Otherwise, I suggest to open a discussion topic asking if any Mac OS users have observed a similar problem. Perhaps we get another insight.

[trulede]

@rseichter Also, you could try an older version of task and see if it works. That would help identify if things broke at some point in time. Start with 3.47.0.

[rseichter]

@trulede Could you point me to documentation explaining how to set up a development environment on my Mac? I know that you are not using macOS yourself, but hopefully there is written information available somewhere I might have missed?

[trulede]

@rseichter I don't know. However it would be sufficient to install a recent version of go on your Mac (version 1.25 IIRC, google will know how), that is all you need in this case. Then you can build task with a command like this:

go build -o task ./cmd/task

For debugging, simple fmt.Printf("my message\n") is normally all you need. For a debugger, things get more involved ... I use VS Code but I don't know about Mac OS, so I can't really help with specifics.

If you know docker, that that is also an approach. A simple dockerfile here: https://github.com/trulede/task-docker/blob/main/Dockerfile would probably work, or at least be a starting point.

[rseichter]

@trulede Thanks, based on your comment I was able to build a standalone binary using Go version 1.26.0 darwin/amd64. I branched off commit 90bcbe9 and added a debugging statement. Here is what I see:

🐟 ls -l
total 4
-rw-r--r-- 1 ralph staff 638 Mar  1 08:01 foo.yml
🐟 /Users/ralph/scratch/task/task --taskfile foo.yml
RS>> path "/Users/ralph/scratch/task-tests" len(path) 31
task: No Taskfile found at ""
task: Failed to run task "default": exit status 100
[201] 🐟 mv foo.yml Taskfile.yml
🐟 /Users/ralph/scratch/task/task
RS>> path "/Users/ralph/scratch/task-tests" len(path) 31
RS>> path "/Users/ralph/scratch/task-tests" len(path) 31
task: Available tasks for this project:
* greet:       Say hello to all.      (aliases: say-hi)
🐟

As before, 201 is the error code passed back to the shell.

I also tried using ./foo.yml and /Users/ralph/scratch/task-tests/foo.yml as alternative task file names, but the tests were just as unsuccessful as before. When I renamed foo.yml to Taskfile.yml, auto-detection kicked in and the file was located, but that obviously does not help me much with passing differently named files.