Clear the Actions list through CakeTaskBuilder

[Kemyke]

What You Are Seeing?

The only way to clear Actions from a CakeTaskBuilder is not cast its ICakeTaskInfo to CakeTask.

What is Expected?

I need to clean the actions from a Task. I have the CakeTaskBuilder which builds that task. I expect to be able to clear Actions without casting to exact type.

CakeTaskBuilder exampleTaskBuilder = Task("Example.Task")
  .Does(()=>
{
 // Some code
});

((CakeTask)exampleTaskBuilder .Task).Actions.Clear();

Possible solutions came to my mind:

• ICakeTaskInfo might contains a List<Func<ICakeContext, Task>> Actions { get; } method
• Or a specific ClearActions() method to clean the actions list.
• If ICakeTaskInfo should be read-only then maybe the CakeTaskBuilder could have a funcion to clear the previously added tasks.

[jnm2]

Could it perhaps be simpler to wait and add the action conditionally later on, rather than eagerly adding and then conditionally removing? Builder patterns like this are usually additive.

[Kemyke]

The problem that we wrote some utility cake scripts and tasks with some default behavior which is appropriate most of the time.
But if a script which include the util script wants to change the default behavior first that should clear the previously registered action. I am looking for behavior like virtual methods in OOP in cake and that was the only way i can achieve that.
If there is a better way or recommendation to implement this, please share it with me.

[jnm2]

@Kemyke Interesting. I've done this the other way around, calling DefaultClean() and DefaultTest(). But you mentioned polymorphism; you actually could override virtual methods if you wanted. Not sure if this is a good pattern, but it's there:

class DefaultTasks
{
    protected ICakeContext Context { get; }

    public DefaultTasks(ICakeContext context)
    {
        Context = context ?? throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(context));

        Context.Task("Build").Does((Action)Build);
        Context.Task("Test").Does((Action)Test);
    }

    public virtual Build()
    {
        Context.MSBuild(...);
    }

    public virtual Test()
    {
        Context.NUnit3(...);
    }
}

_ = new MyTasks(Context);

class MyTasks : DefaultTasks
{
    public MyTasks(ICakeContext context) : base(context)
    {
    }

    public override Build()
    {
        // Before
        base.Build();
        // After
    }

    public override Test()
    {
        // Replace
    }
}

[Kemyke]

@jnm2 hm, that is a nice idea, however the heavy use of classes could be a little bit confusing in cake scripts in my opinion. I use only inmutable, data classes in our 'cake build system'.

I only raised this issue because the lack of Clear actions functionality was strange to me. But if this is a design decision i can understand it and we can just close this issue. To be honest i asked this question twice on gitter but got no answer, so i decided to ask it here if this is a desing question or just a missing method. :)

[patriksvensson]

@Kemyke I think this request is a little bit niche and adding and removing tasks manually is not a path that we normally encourage. Since ((CakeTask)exampleTaskBuilder .Task).Actions.Clear(); works for you, you could create an extension method that hides the casting.