Allow overriding the task name in the logger output

[adamwasila]

Given example Taskfile:

version: '2'

tasks:
  a:
    cmds:
      - task: b
      - task: b
      - task: b

  b:
    cmds:
      - echo "Hello b"
    sources:
      - "source.txt"

Then if source.txt is present I see following output:

task a
task: Task "b" is up to date
task: Task "b" is up to date
task: Task "b" is up to date

Now, the problem is that I cannot customize this output to parametrize task name for each execution separately. This makes output quite unclear of what has actually happened and it could be easily solved using following syntax:

tasks:
  a:
    cmds:
      - task: b
        alias: firstb
      - task: b
        alias: secondb
      - task: b
        alias: thirdb

task a
task: Task "firstb" is up to date
task: Task "secondb" is up to date
task: Task "thirdb" is up to date

Now, the real use case is I have kind of "template" task to build single go binary which I don't want to repeat for every command for obvious reasons (DRY):

  build_target:
    cmds:
      - "go build {{.BUILD_FLAGS}} -o {{.PREFIX}}{{.TARGET}} ./cmd/{{.TARGET}}"
    sources:
      - "**/*.go"
    generates:
      - "{{.PREFIX}}{{.TARGET}}"

Now, project has multiple commands to build, but all I see is:

task build
task: Task "build_target" is up to date
task: Task "build_target" is up to date
task: Task "build_target" is up to date

instead of desired:

task build
task: Task "cmd/command1" is up to date
task: Task "cmd/othercommand" is up to date
task: Task "cmd/supercommand" is up to date

[andreynering]

Hi @adamwasila,

Sounds like a reasonable feature request

[adamwasila]

I made a quick hack to check how it could work. You may see it in this branch: https://github.com/adamwasila/task/tree/subtask-alias
What do you think about it? Should I add support for tasks called by deps and send you pull request or should I rewrite/refactor it first?

Example Taskfile.yml to test against my branch:

version: '2'

tasks:
  default:
    deps:
      - test
    cmds:
      - task: test
        alias: "foo"
      - task: test
        alias: "bar"
      - task: test
  test:
    desc: lorem ipsum
    cmds:
      - echo "hello world"
    sources:
      - Taskfile.yml
    generates:
      - Taskfile.yml

[andreynering]

@adamwasila Sounds like a good way to implement it

Just remember to use v3 as your base branch instead of master

Also, I'm not sure alias is the right name for this, but I don't have a better name in my mind at the moment