Incorrect/confusing `include cycle detected` error message after a silly mistake

[VinGarcia]

• Task version: v3.38.0 (h1:O7kgA6BfwktXHPrheByQO46p3teKtRuq1EpGnFxNzbo=)
• Operating system: MacOS M1 Sonoma

I did a silly mistake on a Taskfile and got a misleading message as a response, so it took me a while to figure out exactly what the issue was.

Minimum Reproducible example

I create two taskfiles in the same directory with the following names:

# Taskfile.yml
version: '3'

includes:
  common: ./TaskfileCommon.yml

tasks:
  test:
    cmds:
      - task: common:test

And

# TaskfileCommon.yml
version: '3'

includes: # This was the silly mistake, this should be `vars` not `includes`
  GOBIN:
    sh: echo $(go env GOPATH)/bin

tasks:
  test:
    cmds:
      - "{{.GOBIN}}/richgo test ./..."

Then I tried running:

task common:test

And the error message I got back was this:

task: include cycle detected between /Users/vingarcia/temp/tfile/Taskfile.yml <--> /Users/vingarcia/temp/tfile/TaskfileCommon.yml

I am not sure how easy it is to fix this issue and I understand this might not be a high priority bug, but I thought it would be worth mentioning anyway.

Great tool, thanks for making it and keeping it open source =]

[semihbkgr]

Hi @VinGarcia , You’re getting a cyclic include error because it implicitly re-points to the default Taskfile.yml file.

In TaskfileCommon.yml, the GOBIN field is missing the path (taskfile) field, so it defaults to an empty string, which points only to the current directory (joining dir and path with path being empty). As a result, when the code tries to locate the actual file using the Exists function, it doesn't find the actual file and then checks for default filenames—in this case, Taskfile.yml.

task/taskfile/taskfile.go

Lines 105 to 126 in fe09c01

	func Exists(l *logger.Logger, path string) (string, error) {
	fi, err := os.Stat(path)
	if err != nil {
	return "", err
	}
	if fi.Mode().IsRegular() ||
	fi.Mode()&os.ModeDevice != 0 ||
	fi.Mode()&os.ModeSymlink != 0 ||
	fi.Mode()&os.ModeNamedPipe != 0 {
	return filepath.Abs(path)
	}
	for _, taskfile := range defaultTaskfiles {
	alt := filepathext.SmartJoin(path, taskfile)
	if _, err := os.Stat(alt); err == nil {
	l.VerboseOutf(logger.Magenta, "task: [%s] Not found - Using alternative (%s)\n", path, taskfile)
	return filepath.Abs(alt)
	}
	}
	return "", errors.TaskfileNotFoundError{URI: path, Walk: false}
	}

The view of the include cycle is:

graph LR;
    Taskfile.yml-->|common|TaskfileCommon.yml;
    TaskfileCommon.yml-->|GOBIN|Taskfile.yml;

Loading

[semihbkgr]

I'm not sure if this is an issue that needs to be fixed, but perhaps we could consider preventing empty strings and null values in the path of includes if there’s no use case for them.

[pd93]

includes: # This was the silly mistake, this should be `vars` not `includes`
  GOBIN:
    sh: echo $(go env GOPATH)/bin

This should absolutely be generating an error when no taskfile: or directory: is specified on an include.

[semihbkgr]

@pd93 So, I think I can work on this.