Tasks

Tasks

Defining a task

The simplest way to define a task is through the Tasks:Task functions

Tasks:Task "compile"(function()
    print("Compiling now...")
end)

You can define dependencies:

Tasks:Task "test"({"compile"}, function()
    print("Running tests")
end)

You can also chains functions together:

Tasks:Task "test"(function()
    print("Running tests")
end)
    :Depends("compile")
    :Description("Compile and run tests")

You can also use the Tasks:AddTask function. This also supports chaining:

Tasks:AddTask("test", {"compile"}, function()
    print("running tests")
end):Description("Compile and run tests")

Notes on dependencies

Files can depend on a file like so:

Tasks:Task "test"(function()
    print("Running tests")
end
    :Depends("aTask")
    :Depends({"Many", "Tasks"})

However you can also depend on a file. This will attempt to find a task that creates something.lua or use it if it exists already.

Tasks:Task "test"(function()
    print("Running tests with something.lua")
end
    :Requires("something.lua")

You can define tasks that create files with :Produces

Tasks:Task "combine"(function()
    print("Combining files into something.lua")
end
    :Produces("something.lua")

You can also define tasks that read in files, and produce other files:

Tasks:Task "minify"(function(input, output)
    print("Transforming " .. input .. " into " .. output)
end
    :Maps("something.lua", "something.min.lua")
    -- or use wildcards
    :Maps("wild:*.lua", "wild:*.min.lua")
    -- or use patterns. Note, the capturing group
    -- should be in the output field.
    :Maps("ptrn:%1%.lua", "ptrn:(.*)%.min%.lua")

You can use multiple maps functions

Predefined tasks

Some tasks have predefined functions. These normally follow the pattern Tasks:TypeName(name, options, taskDependencies)

Clean

Clean removes a directory/file from the filesystem. It is worth noting that the directory is global, so you must use fs.combine

Tasks:Clean("clean", fs.combine(CurrentDirectory, "build"))

Combine

Combines a dependency tree into one file

local sources = Dependencies(CurrentDirectory)
sources:Main "Thing.lua"
	:Depends "Another"
sources:Main "Another.lua"
	:Name "Another"

Tasks:Combine("combine", sources, "build.lua", {"clean"})

This also takes the additional option of :Verify(verify). If set to true this will verify sources with loadstring to ensure that they are valid Lua sources.

You can read more on dependencies here.

Minify

There are multiple ways to minify files:

The minify all task:

This allows you to define a task that can minify any file based on a wildcard.

-- All these arguments are optional
-- We define a task called _minify that reads in anything called
-- *.lua and produces a *.min.lua file
Tasks:MinifyAll("_minify", "wild:*.lua", "wild:*.min.lua")

-- So now we can do
Tasks:AddTask "minify"
	:Requires(File "Result.min.lua")
	:Description("Produces a minified version of the code")
-- And it runs any task needed to create Result.min.lua and minifies it

The normal minify task

This is much more simple, but much less flexible:

Tasks:Minify("minify", "Result.lua", "Result.min.lua")