Merging not working properly with yaml reference block

[rfan-debug]

Description

It seems the yaml reference block merging hasn't been resolved yet.

The following taskfile.yml code cannot inherit the variable MAGIC as long as there is another vars field defined in rhel6

version: "3"
tasks:
  task_rhel7: &anchor
    cmds:
      - echo {{.VERSION}}
      - echo {{.MAGIC}}
    vars:
      VERSION: rhel7
      MAGIC: magic
  task_rhel6:
    <<: *anchor
    vars:
      VERSION: rhel6

Output:

task task_rhel6
task: [task_rhel6] echo rhel6
rhel6
task: [task_rhel6] echo

I'd expect the task task_rhel6 echoes the MAGIC variable properly.

Related issues:

1. Merging not working with go-task 2.0 #112
2. Merge with overrides doesn't work in strict mode go-yaml/yaml#410. It seems that the go/yaml merge issues won't be fixed since the repository has been archived.

Version

3.42.0

Operating system

MacOS 15

Experiments Enabled

No response

Example Taskfile

[andreynering]

Hi @rfan-debug,

YAML anchors and merging is something we do not recommend using in Taskfiles. Task has its own builtin methods for reusing code.

Since this is not officially supported, I'm closing this issue.

[rfan-debug]

@andreynering Thanks for your quick turnaround. Could you point me to the documentations on how to write reusable blocks in Taskfile since the yaml's anchor/merge is not recommended here? I tried to read through the doc sites but didn't figure out how to "write vars once, and use it in multiple tasks with overriding."

[andreynering]

It depends on what you're trying to achieve.

You can call tasks within tasks, have global variables (which are overridable within tasks), extract tasks to a separate Taskfile, etc

[rfan-debug]

I see. I get the idea. Thanks a lot!