Ability to define functions that aren't exposed as tasks

[nickjj]

Hey, great idea btw. Really enjoying this pattern.

But I ran into a situation where I would very much like to add a function into my Taskfile but not have it be runnable directly, or perhaps as a compromise not be listed in the help menu.

This comes in handy when you want to define a "helper" function that multiple tasks can call.

For example, currently I have some tasks that look like this:

function flask {
  ## Run any Flask commands
  docker-compose exec web flask "${@}"
}

function flake8 {
  ## Lint Python code with flake8
  docker-compose exec web flake8 "${@}"
}

It would be really nice if I could do this instead:

function _web {
  docker-compose exec web "${@}"
}

function flask {
  ## Run any Flask commands
  _web flask "${@}"
}

function flake8 {
  ## Lint Python code with flake8
  _web flake8 "${@}"
}

And then the help menu would only show the flask and flake8 commands and running _web directly would throw a command not found.

I figured we could mark these helper functions with an underscore to distinguish what should be private or not.

Method I've tried so far that partially works

You can do compgen -A function | grep -v "^_" | cat -n which hides them from the task list but technically you can still run the helper functions directly.

Any thoughts on how to do this in a better way?

[GustavoKatel]

not sure if this is the best way, but you check if the helper task if any arg was passed (i.e.: $#)

[brenwell]

I am doing this, maybe it helps

#!/bin/bash

function sayhellomars() {
  echo "hello mars"
}

function public:hellomars() {
  sayhellomars
}

function public:helloworld() {
  echo "hello world"
}


# DEFAULT public: list all possible commands
function public:help {
    echo "$0 <task> <args>"
    echo "Tasks:"
    compgen -A function | sed -En 's/public:(.*)/\1/p' | cat -n
}

TIMEFORMAT="Task completed in %3lR"
time "public:${@:-help}" # make help default

./taskfile help

~/bin(master*) » ./taskfile help
./taskfile <task> <args>
Tasks:
     1	hellomars
     2	helloworld
     3	help

./taskfile sayhellomars

~/bin(master*) » ./taskfile sayhellomars
./taskfile: line 27: public:sayhellomars: command not found

[nickjj]

@brenwell Ah I see, the time "public:${@:-help}" line is allowing non-public functions to be not found. I wonder how we can switch the logic so that all functions except functions prefixed with private: or _ aren't. This way you don't need to prefix every public function with public:.