Unable to unset the `--active-tasks` filter

[miguelpduarte]

It seems that it's not possible to unset the --active-tasks filter.

My use-case is that I don't need this filter as I mostly use taskopen with (UU)IDs retrieved from taskwarrior beforehand, so I just want to target that ID specifically, regardless of the task's state.

I've tried a few variations in the taskopenrc config file, and none of them seemed to work:

[General]
# These silently does nothing, e.g. running `taskopen --debug 11` just prints "No actions applicable"
# `taskopen diagnostics` prints out an error:
# parsejson.nim(518)       raiseParseErr
# Error: unhandled exception: (1, 0) Error: { expected [JsonParsingError]
--active-tasks = "" 
--active-tasks
# These throw an error in normal usage (as expected, I think that this is not valid .ini file syntax):
# ~/.config/taskopen/taskopenrc(13, 9) Error: invalid token: =
# Invalid config option in [General]: /opt/homebrew/Cellar/taskopen/2.0.2/share/taskopen/scripts:
--active-tasks =
--active-tasks :

In the end, my workaround was to specify status.any: as the filter:

[General]
--active-tasks = "status.any:" # Note the trailing ':', it's required as per the TW syntax!

This way, I am redundantly "filtering" for "any state", but at least it works as expected ✅

My assumption is that taskopen expects this value to always be set, and the strange behaviour when it's unset via the config may reflect that.

taskopen diagnostics dump (slightly redacted):

$ taskopen diagnostics
Environment
  Platform:       Mac OSX
  Taskopen:       2.0.2
  Taskwarrior:    3.4.1
  Configuration:  ~/.config/taskopen/taskopenrc
Current configuration
  Binaries and paths:
    taskbin            = task
    taskargs           =
    editor             = vim
    path_ext           = /opt/homebrew/Cellar/taskopen/2.0.2/share/taskopen/scripts
  General:
    debug              = false
    no_annotation_hook = addnote $ID
    task_attributes    = priority,project,tags,description
  Action groups:
  Subcommands:
    default            = normal
  Actions:
    files
      .target          = annotations
      .regex           = ^[\.\/~]+.*\.(.*)
      .labelregex      = .*
      .command         = open $FILE
      .modes           = batch,any,normal
    notes
      .target          = annotations
      .regex           = Notes
      .labelregex      = .*
      .command         = $EDITOR ~/tasknotes/$UUID.md
      .modes           = batch,any,normal
    url
      .target          = annotations
      .regex           = ((?:www|http).*)
      .labelregex      = .*
      .command         = open $LAST_MATCH
      .modes           = batch,any,normal

[miguelpduarte]

Ah, just found the -A or --All switch in man taskopen:

    Filter control
       -A/--All
              Query all tasks, including completed and deleted tasks.

So putting this in the taskopenrc configuration seems to do what I want:

[General]
--All

Also confirmed it by trying this with a status:waiting task.
Before:

$ taskopen --debug 43
Executing: task rc.verbose=blank,label,edit rc.json.array=on rc.gc=off context show
Executing: task rc.verbose=blank,label,edit rc.json.array=on rc.gc=off \(project:work\) 43 +PENDING export
No actions applicable.

After:

$ taskopen --debug 43
No actions applicable.
Attaching to task 43 'My redacted task text'.
Type a file extension (or none): ^CSIGINT: Interrupted by Ctrl-C.

So I guess that's the way to do it. Maybe this can be added to the wiki here in GitHub, or next to the documentation about --active-tasks?

--

Update: Setting the --All switch in the config seems to break the filters somehow. If I'm not passing in --debug I find myself needing to write something like taskopen -- <my actual filter> as otherwise the filter appears to be ignored 😕 So there might still be some bug/inconsistent behaviour here.

[jschlatow]

@miguelpduarte Thanks for the report and sharing your observations. Unfortunately, I'm unable to look into this in the near future. Please feel free to contribute.