Remote Taskfiles experiment

[pd93]

Warning

All experimental features are subject to breaking changes and/or removal at any time. We strongly recommend that you do not use these features in a production environment. They are intended for testing and feedback only.

Note

You can view the Remote Taskfiles experiment documentation on our website, including instructions on how to enable/disable it.

Context

This experiment attempts to solve the problems originally described by #770.

Currently, Task only supports running Taskfiles located on the local filesystem. This makes it difficult to reuse Taskfiles across various repositories and systems without making copies of a file. It would be useful to have a way to run a Taskfile located on a remote system or run a local Taskfile that includes one on a remote system.

Proposal

This experiment would allow users to run a Taskfiles located elsewhere, such as via HTTP or in a remote Git repository. These remote Taskfiles can either be run directly from the CLI or included by another Taskfile.

We're looking to gather feedback on the current draft, so please feel free to leave your thoughts/comments here.

Decision log / TODOs:

• Refactor nodes as an interface feat: node refactor #1316
• HTTP nodes feat: remote taskfiles (HTTP) #1152
• Decide between go-getter or a native implementation
  • No go-getter for now. We can re-evaluate later
• How to handle security (remote files that change etc)
  • See https://taskfile.dev/experiments/remote-taskfiles/#security
• Caching (--download/--offline flags or similar)
  • See https://taskfile.dev/experiments/remote-taskfiles/#caching--running-offline
• Implement --yes flag on prompts feat: unify prompts #1344
• Decide if we should use remote/local files first if both are available feat: prefer remote taskfiles over cached ones #1345
• Consider storing checksums/cached files with a more user-friendly filename feat(remote): prefix checksums/cached files with the filename #1636
• Command to clear the remote cache feat(remote): add a command to clear the cache #1639
• Check that local -> remote -> remote:local includes work correctly feat: enable root remote taskfiles #1347
• Redact credentials in remote URIs Remote Taskfiles: redact credentials of remote URLs in prompts and logs #2045
• Auto update TTL for cached files Feature Request: Have an auto update ttl for downloaded taskfiles #1402
• Add remote flags as config in Taskfile Feature request: Allow taskfile schema to use options related to remote taskfiles #1403
• Decide how special variables should look for remote files
• Running root remote Taskfiles feat: enable root remote taskfiles #1347
  • e.g. task test --taskfile https://raw.githubusercontent.com/go-task/task/main/Taskfile.yml
• Git Nodes
  • e.g. git@example.com/foo/bar?ref=main//Taskfile.yml feat(remote): support include git remote #1652

[task-bot]

This issue has been marked as an experiment proposal! 🧪 It will now enter a period of consultation during which we encourage the community to provide feedback on the proposed design. Please see the experiment workflow documentation for more information on how we release experiments.

[task-bot]

This experiment has been marked as a draft! ✨ This means that an initial implementation has been added to the latest release of Task! You can find information about this experiment and how to enable it in our experiments documentation. Please see the experiment workflow documentation for more information on how we release experiments.

[wburningham]

If one wants to use remote tasks in CI how does one bypass the prompt when running a task for the first time. Is there a flag or environment variable that can be set to “force yes” to the prompt on whether or not to include the remote task file?

BTW thanks for a great experiment!

[wburningham]

The documentation mentions the -y flag for tasks that require prompts, but the experimental documentation doesn't mention if that also applies to remote taskfile includes.