Simplify installation and maintenance of the Task executable

[llxff]

Hi 👋

Currently, adopting task requires developers to manually install it on their machines and keep it updated. This is not very convenient, especially when there are multiple developers working on the project and have different versions of task or when the tool needs to be installed on CI. It is also sometimes difficult to sell task instead of make because make is installed by default on most systems.

Solution

There is a tool Batect that deals with the similar issue in a quite elegant way. It uses a small script that you put to your project and this script manages the installation and running of batect executable.

Implementation

task could have a similar shell script which checks if task is installed and, if not, installs it. Developers will run task tasks via this script, e.g. ./task do-something, without manual installation of the task.

Here's an example of how the script could look like:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# I used Batect's script as an example: https://github.com/batect/batect/blob/main/wrapper/unix/src/template.sh

{
    set -euo pipefail

    VERSION="3.27.1"
    VERSION_CACHE_DIR="$HOME/.task/cache/$VERSION"
    TASK_EXE="$VERSION_CACHE_DIR/task"

    function main() {
        if ! haveVersionCachedLocally; then
            download
        fi

        runApplication "$@"
    }

    function haveVersionCachedLocally() {
        [ -f "$TASK_EXE" ]
    }

    function download() {
        sh -c "$(curl --location https://taskfile.dev/install.sh)" -- -d -b ${VERSION_CACHE_DIR} v${VERSION}
    }

    function runApplication() {
        exec \
            ${TASK_EXE} \
            "$@"
    }

    main "$@"
    exit $?
}

Advantages

1. Consistent versioning: it ensures everyone on the project uses the same version of task and eliminates the possibility of version related issues.
2. Improved UX: it simplifies the setup process locally and on CI, which is more convenient for developers.

What do you think?