Hiding tasks from --list which are pre/post methods

[toxinu]

Very similar to #290 but the workaround proposed by @bitprophet doesn't work for pre/post methods.

I get this output:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "[path]/bin/invoke", line 11, in <module>
    sys.exit(program.run())
  File "[path]/invoke/program.py", line 270, in run
    self.execute()
  File "[path]/invoke/program.py", line 379, in execute
    executor.execute(*self.tasks)
  File "[path]/invoke/executor.py", line 97, in execute
    expanded = self.expand_calls(calls, config)
  File "[path]/invoke/executor.py", line 188, in expand_calls
    ret.extend(self.expand_calls(call.pre, config))
  File "[path]/invoke/executor.py", line 180, in expand_calls
    if call.contextualized:
AttributeError: 'function' object has no attribute 'contextualized'

With this source:

from invoke import task

def pre_task():
    pass

@task(pre=[pre_task])
def my_task():
    pass

[toxinu]

Just realized that underscore prefixed tasks are not listed. Am I wrong?

[dirkschneemann]

Doesn't work for me on invoke 0.15.0, underscore prefixed tasks are still listed (at the top of the list since they are in alphabetical order).

This feature would be much appreciated since I have some pre- and post-tasks which I do not want to flood the task list with (they are not meant to be executed on their own anyway).

[bitprophet]

• pre_task() needs to be an actual @task (and both functions need an initial context argument, at least in modern Invoke, see the changelog for when that changed) - that's the proximate cause of the error here.
• It's possible at some point leading underscores caused tasks to be hidden or not registered correctly, but I don't think that was ever on purpose and it's probably been fixed since, if it existed.
• I acknowledge the overall feature request, though I don't think it makes sense for pre/post tasks to be hidden by default - much of the time, the entire point of structuring things as pre/post tasks and not simply "call subroutine from inside task body" is so that the 'subroutines' show up as independently callable tasks!
• I think what you really want instead is something like @task(hidden=True), allowing something to be listed as a task for purposes of dependency management and deduplication (i.e. if it were in the main task's body, it'd run every time the main task does, disallowing deduplication/caching - see also #461 which expands that feature set) but where you indicate that it's not intended for direct execution.

[danieleteti]

Any news on this? It would be really useful for dependency management and deduplication

[rberger]

Having @task(hidden=True) would be awesome

[SnoopJ]

I believe this feature request (as interpreted above to be fundamentally about the ability to hide tasks in general) is also covered by #722 (that one being a later duplicate of this one) and would be closed by merge of #723.