Interactive variables

[mochja]

Hello,

was there some though on interactive variables?

Basically after running task, user would be prompted for input. I found a solution to use which involves redirection of stdio.

I am trying to use dialog to let user choose from couple options. Same can be reproduced with read.

version: '3'

tasks:
  default:
    cmds:
      - echo "{{.FOO}}"
    vars:
      FOO:
        sh: |
          dialog --clear --default-item 2 --checklist "Select:" 0 0 5 1 "First element" off 2 "Second element" off 3 "Third element" off 2>&1 > /dev/stdout < /dev/stdin

Which shows (after running task):

and correctly sets the value:

---

Example with read:

version: '3'

tasks:
  default:
    cmds:
      - echo "{{.FOO}}"
    vars:
      FOO:
        sh: |
          read -p "Continue? (Y/N): " confirm < /dev/stdin > /dev/stdout
          echo $confirm

I could imagine interactive attribute for variables too:

vars:
  FOO:
    sh: ....
    interactive: true

What do you think?

[pd93]

@mochja Does something about the examples you've posted not work? I'm not sure what the benefit would be to add this functionality directly into Task when it can already be done by using read or dialog today.

My general attitude towards this sort of thing is that we should leave jobs like this to the tools that are designed to do it, rather than reimplementing existing code into Task. This has the benefit of allowing the user to chose which tool they want to use rather than us making assumptions about how they want to do it.

[mochja]

@pd93 they do work.

I am not looking for dialog or read replacement, I would just like to have the commands (within the variables) interactive without the explicit need to redirect the I/O.

For example:

This does not work.

vars:
  FOO:
    sh: |
      read -p "Continue? (Y/N): " confirm; echo $confirm
    # interactive: true # (we could add this to make it work)