returning variables from prerequisites?

[evantahler]

I would like to create one jake task to pre-load my environment, and then use that as a prerequisite for other tasks (a very rails-y pattern). However, since none of the jake files share a namespace, I would like to return an 'environment' variable from my environment perquisite to my main task:

An prototypical environment loader:

task("envrionment", {async: true}, function() {
  app = require("myApp.js");
  app.initialize(function(err, api){
    if(err == null){ complete(err, api); }
  });
});

I tried 2 methods of "catching" the returned api variable, but to no avail:

desc("otherTask: prereq");
task("otherTaskPrereq", ["envrionment"], {async: true}, function(err, api){
  console.log(api)
});

desc("otherTask: invoke");
task("otherTaskInvoke", {async: true}, function(){
  var env = jake.Task["envrionment"];
  env.addListener('complete', function(err, api){
    console.log(api)
  });
  env.invoke();
});

Is such a thing possible?

[mde]

There hasn't really been a nice way to handle this. I've just modified Task to include a "value" property which will be the value passed to complete for async tasks, and the return value of the action-function itself for sync tasks. This value will be passed when emitting the "complete" event. (We have a separate "error" event for tasks, so the (err, data) convention doesn't make sense here.)

After a task is completed, this value will be available in the ".value" property on the task. Calling reenable on the task will clear this value.

I've just pushed these changes to NPM in v0.5.17.

Thanks for the input!

[evantahler]

Awesome! Thanks for the fast turn-around, @mde. I'll be working to bake jake into https://github.com/evantahler/actionhero as a first-class citizen this week.

For those of you who got here from google, that means that you can now do this (from my example above):

desc("otherTask: prereq");
task("otherTaskPrereq", ["envrionment"], {async: true}, function(){
  api = jake.Task["envrionment"].value;
  console.log(api)
});

desc("otherTask: invoke");
task("otherTaskInvoke", {async: true}, function(){
  var env = jake.Task["envrionment"];
  env.addListener('complete', function(){
    var api = env.value;
    console.log(api)
  });
  env.invoke();
});