Add Add Default Task To List All Tasks as a Taskfile TIL

2026-07-05 17:00:17 +00:00 · 2026-03-23 21:12:44 -05:00
parent 8af252f232
commit c875652725
2 changed files with 54 additions and 1 deletions
@@ -0,0 +1,52 @@
+# Add Default Task To List All Tasks
+
+One thing I like about [`just`](https://github.com/casey/just) is that if you
+run `just` by itself, the default behavior is to list out all the commands it
+can run.
+
+[Taskfile](https://github.com/go-task/task) technically does this as well, but
+with a warning at the end:
+
+```
+❯ task
+task: Available tasks for this project:
+* notes:              Interactive picker for notes tasks
+* notes:diff:         Show uncommitted changes in notes
+* notes:edit:         All-in-one edit, commit, and push notes
+* notes:log:          Show recent commit history for notes
+* notes:open:         Opens NOTES.md (syncs latest changes first) in default editor
+* notes:push:         Commit and push changes to notes submodule
+* notes:status:       Check status of notes submodule
+* notes:sync:         Sync latest changes from the notes submodule
+task: Task "default" does not exist
+```
+
+I prefer to tidy this up a little by adding `task --list` as the _default_ in my
+`Taskfile.yml`.
+
+```yml
+  default:
+    desc: Show available commands
+    cmds:
+      - task --list
+```
+
+Now when I run `task` with no arguments, I get this minutely nicer version:
+
+```
+❯ task
+Alias tip: t
+task: [default] task --list
+task: Available tasks for this project:
+* default:            Show available commands
+* notes:              Interactive picker for notes tasks
+* notes:diff:         Show uncommitted changes in notes
+* notes:edit:         All-in-one edit, commit, and push notes
+* notes:log:          Show recent commit history for notes
+* notes:open:         Opens NOTES.md (syncs latest changes first) in default editor
+* notes:push:         Commit and push changes to notes submodule
+* notes:status:       Check status of notes submodule
+* notes:sync:         Sync latest changes from the notes submodule
+```
+
+Notice there is no `task: Task "default" does not exist` warning at the end.