NAME¶
task-faq - A FAQ for the
task(1) command line todo manager.
WELCOME¶
Welcome to the taskwarrior FAQ. If you have would like to see a question
answered here, please send us a note at <support@taskwarrior.org>.
- Q: When I redirect the output to a file, I lose all the
colors. How do I fix this?
- Taskwarrior knows when the output is not going directly to
a terminal, and strips out all the color control characters. This is based
on the assumption that the color control codes are not wanted in the file.
Prevent this with the following entry in your .taskrc file:
_forcecolor=on
or by temporarily overriding the value on the command line:
task ... rc._forcecolor=on
There is an additional problem using pagers such as 'less' and 'more',
because color control codes are stripped. When using less, these options
will preserve the color codes:
task ... | less -FrX
There have been problems reported with the Linux 'more' pager, which inserts
newline characters.
- Q: How do I backup my taskwarrior data files? Where are
they?
- Taskwarrior writes all data to files in this location:
~/.task/
You may have overridden this location with the 'data.location' configuration
setting, in which case backup that instead. All files in this location
should be backed up. Making sure all the files in this location are backed
up, and not just a named subset will ensure that you properly backup
future versions of taskwarrior, which will likely introduce more files in
this location.
Don't forget there is also the ~/.taskrc file that contains your taskwarrior
configuration data.
- Q: How can I separate my work tasks from my home tasks?
Specifically, can I keep them completely separate?
- You can do this by creating an alternate .taskrc file, then
using shell aliases. Here are example Bash commands to achieve this:
% cp ~/.taskrc ~/.taskrc_home
% (now edit .taskrc_home to change the value of data.location)
% alias wtask="task"
% alias htask="task rc:~/.taskrc_home"
This gives you two commands, 'wtask' and 'htask' that operate using two
different sets of task data files. Bash shell functions are a good
alternative.
- Q: Can I revert to a previous version of taskwarrior?
How?
- Yes, you can revert to a previous version of task, simply
by downloading an older version and installing it. If you find a bug in
task, then this may be the only way to work around the bug, until a patch
release is made.
Note that it is possible that the taskwarrior file format will change. For
example, the format changed between versions 1.5.0 and 1.6.0. Taskwarrior
will automatically upgrade the file but if you need to revert to a
previous version of taskwarrior, there is the file format to consider.
This is yet another good reason to back up your task data files!
- Q: Can I have two separate versions of taskwarrior
installed? How?
- Yes, and here is one simple way to do that. Install the
older version of taskwarrior, and then rename the 'task' binary to
something like 't194' to reflect the version number. Then install the
newer version, which will be named 'task'. Now you have 't194' and 'task'
both installed, both using the same configuration and data.
Note that the older version will not be aware of any new configuration
settings and so will complain about them in the 'show' command. This can
be ignored. Likewise the newer version may complain about obsolete entries
in the configuration.
Note also that the man pages will overwrite, which is why it is suggested
that the older version be installed first, so that you benefit from
improved documentation.
- Q: How do I build a Darwin 32bit version of
task
- The taskwarrior packages will not work on a 32-bit OSX
installation on Core Duo hardware. You will need to build Taskwarrior from
source, and use this configure command:
./configure "CFLAGS=-m32" "CXXFLAGS=-m32"
"LDFLAGS=-m32"
See: http://taskwarrior.org/issues/817
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3261909/build-32bit-on-64-bit-linux-using-a-configure-script
- Q: How do I build taskwarrior under Cygwin?
- Take a look at the README.build file, where the latest
information on build issues is kept. Taskwarrior is built the same way
everywhere. But under Cygwin, you'll need to make sure you have the
following packages available first:
gcc
make
The gcc and make packages allow you to compile the code, and are therefore
required.
- Q: Do colors work under Cygwin?
- They do, but only in a limited way. You can use regular
foreground colors (black, red, green ...) and you can regular background
colors (on_black, on_red, on_green ...), but underline and bold are not
supported.
If you run the command:
% task colors
Taskwarrior will display all the colors it can use, and you will see which
ones you can use.
Note that if you install the 'mintty' shell in Cygwin, then you can use 256
colors.
See the 'man task-color' page for more details on which colors can be used.
- Q: Where does taskwarrior store the data?
- By default, taskwarrior creates a .taskrc file in your home
directory and populates it with defaults. Taskwarrior also creates a .task
directory in your home directory and puts data files there.
- Q: Can I edit that data?
- Of course you can. It is a simple text file, and looks
somewhat like the JSON format, and if you are careful not to break the
format, there is no reason not to edit it. But taskwarrior provides a rich
command set to do that manipulation for you, so it is probably best to
leave those files alone.
- Q: How do I restore my .taskrc file to
defaults?
- If you delete (or rename) your .taskrc file, taskwarrior
will offer to create a default one for you. Another way to do this is with
the command:
task rc:new-file version
Taskwarrior will create 'new-file' if it doesn't already exist. There will
not be much in it though - taskwarrior relies heavily on default values,
which can be seen with this command:
task show
This lists all the currently known settings. If you have just created a new
file, then this command lists only the defaults.
Note that this is a good way to learn about new configuration settings,
particularly if your .taskrc file was created by an older version.
- Q: Do I need to back up my taskwarrior data?
- Yes you do, like all your other files. You should back up
all the files in your ~/.task directory, and your ~/.taskrc file too.
- Q: Can I share my tasks between different
machines?
- Yes, you can. Most people have success with a DropBox - a
free and secure file synching tool. Simply configure taskwarrior to store
it's data in a dropbox folder, by modifying the:
data.location=...
configuration variable. Check out DropBox at http://www.dropbox.com.
- Q: I don't want to use dropbox. Is there another way to
synchronize my tasks?
- Of course. Especially if you want to modify tasks offline
on both machines and synchronize them later on. For this purpose there is
a 'merge' command which is is able to insert the modifications you made to
one of your task databases into a second database.
Here is a basic example of the procedure:
task merge ssh://user@myremotehost/.task/
task push ssh://user@myremotehost/.task/
The first command fetches the undo.data file from the remote system, reads
the changes made and updates the local database. When this merge command
completes, you should copy all the local .data files to the remote system
either by using the push command explicitly or by activating the
merge.autopush feature in the ~/.taskrc file. This way you ensure that
both systems are fully synchronized.
- Q: The undo.data file gets very large - do I need
it?
- You need it if you want the undo capability, or the merge
capability mentioned above. But if it gets large, you can certainly
truncate it to save space, just be careful to delete lines from the top of
the file, up to and including a separator '---'. The simplest way is to
simply delete the undo.data file. Note that it does not slow down
taskwarrior, because it is never read until you want to undo. Otherwise
taskwarrior only appends to the file.
It is not recommended that you delete the undo.data file.
- Q: How do I know whether my terminal support 256
colors?
- You will need to make sure your TERM environment variable
is set to xterm-color, otherwise the easiest way is to just try it! With
version 1.9 or later, you simply run
task color
and a full color palette is displayed. If you see only 8 or 16 colors,
perhaps with those colors repeated, then your terminal does not support
256 colors.
See the task-color(5) man page for more details.
- Q: How do I make use of all these colors?
- Use one of our provided color themes, or create your own -
after all, they are just collections of color settings.
See the task-color(5) man page for an in-depth explanation of the color
rules.
- Q: How can I make taskwarrior put the command in the
terminal window title?
- Just set the following value in your .taskrc file:
xterm.title=on
- Q: Taskwarrior searches in a case-sensitive fashion -
can I change that?
- You can. Just set the following value in your .taskrc file:
search.case.sensitive=no
This will affect searching for keywords:
task Document list
taskwarrior will perform a caseless search in the description and any
annotations for the keyword 'Document'. It also affects description and
annotation substitutions:
task 1 modify /teh/the/
The pattern on the left will now be a caseless search term.
- Q: Why do the ID numbers change?
- Taskwarrior does this to always show you the smallest
numbers it can. The idea is that if your tasks are numbered 1 - 33, for
example, those are easy to type in. If instead task kept a rolling
sequence number, after a while your tasks might be numbered 481 - 513,
which makes it more likely to enter one incorrectly, because there are
more digits.
When you run a report (such as "list"), the numbers are assigned
before display. For example, you can do this:
task list
task 12 done
task add Pay the rent
task 31 delete
Those id numbers are then good until the next report is run. This is because
taskwarrior performs a garbage-collect operation on the pending tasks file
when a report is run, which moves the deleted and completed tasks from the
pending.data file to the completed.data file. This keeps the pending tasks
file small, and therefore keeps taskwarrior fast. The completed data file
is the one that grows unbounded with use, but that one isn't accessed as
much, so it doesn't matter as much. So in all, the ID number resequencing
is about efficiency.
- Q: How do I list tasks that are either priority 'H' or
'M', but not 'L'?
- Taskwarrior's filters are all by default combined with and
implicit logical AND operator, so if you were to try this:
task priority:H priority:M list
There would be no results, because the priority could not simultaneously be
'H' AND 'M'. Instead, you have a choice. You can do this:
task '(priority:H or priority:M)' list
Note that the quotes are one way of escaping the ( ) characters that are
otherwise interpreted by the shell before taskwarrior sees them. You can
also do this:
task priority.not:L priority.any: list
This filter states that the priority must not be 'L', AND there must be a
priority assigned. This filter then properly lists tasks that are 'H' or
'M', because the two logical restrictions are not mutually exclusive as in
the original filter.
Some of you may be familiar with DeMorgan's laws of formal logic that relate
the AND and OR operators in terms of each other via negation, which can be
used to construct task filters.
- Q: How do I delete an annotation?
- Taskwarrior now has a 'denotate' command to remove
annotations. Here is an example:
task add Original task
task 1 annotate foo
task 1 annotate bar
task 1 annotate foo bar
Now to delete the first annotation, use:
task 1 denotate foo
This takes the fragment 'foo' and compares it to each of the annotations. In
this example, it will remove the first annotation, not the third, because
it is an exact match. If there are no exact matches, it will remove the
first non-exact match:
task 1 denotate ar
This will remove the second annotation - the first non-exact match.
- Q: Why Lua as an extension language?
- Lua has many positive attributes:
- Lua is written using tight, fast, standard C
- Lua is a breeze to integrate into any product
- The Lua source code is beautifully written
- Lua is a small language
Guile, Scheme and Neko were also considered.
- Q: How can I help?
- There are lots of ways. Here are some:
- Provide feedback on what works, what does not
- Tell us how task does or does not fit your workflow
- Tell people about task
- Report bugs when you see them
- Contribute to our Wiki
- Suggest features
- Write unit tests
- Write add-on scripts, and share them
- Fix bugs
CREDITS & COPYRIGHTS¶
Copyright (C) 2006 - 2012 P. Beckingham, F. Hernandez.
Taskwarrior is distributed under the MIT license. See
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php for more information.
SEE ALSO¶
task(1), taskrc(5), task-tutorial(5), task-color(5),
task-sync(5)
For more information regarding task, the following may be referenced:
- The official site at
- <http://taskwarrior.org>
- The official code repository at
- <git://tasktools.org/task.git/>
- You can contact the project by writing an email to
- <support@taskwarrior.org>
REPORTING BUGS¶
- Bugs in taskwarrior may be reported to the issue-tracker
at
- <http://taskwarrior.org>