Simplified task graph configuration

Simplified task graph configuration.

Graph("Clean")
   .Then("Build")
   .Then("Run-Unit-Tests", If(() => runTests))
   .Then("Copy-Files")
   .Then("Zip-Files", If(c => c.HasArgument("zipFiles")))
   .Then("Create-NuGet-Package")
   .Then("Publish-NuGet-Package", If(publish))
   .Then("All")

[patriksvensson]

I’m not sure if I understand what you mean 😕 Normally when you declare dependencies you write:

Task("Clean")
   .Does(() =>
{
});

Task("UpdateAssemblyInfo")
   .WithCriteria(() => !isLocalBuild)
   .IsDependentOn("Clean")
   .Does(() =>
{
});

Task("Build")
   .IsDependentOn("A")
   .Does(() =>
{
});

What I’m proposing is another way of declaring the dependency graph:

Task("Clean")
   .Does(() =>
{
});

Task("UpdateAssemblyInfo")
   .Does(() =>
{
});

Task("Build")
   .Does(() =>
{
});

// Declare dependencies.

Graph("Clean")
   .Then("Build");
   .Then("OtherTask1");
   .Then("OtherTask2");

if(!isLocalBuild)
{
   Graph("Clean")
      .Then("UpdateAssemblyInfo");
}

With a model like this, you could theoretically tell Cake to run tasks is parallel:

Graph("Clean")
   .Then("Build");
   .ThenInParallel("OtherTask1", "OtherTask2");

This is just an example. I find the Graph method name a little confusing.

This would (like I’ve said many times before) need some more thought 😄

[patriksvensson]

@rbutcher We will not change this behavior.

First it would be a massive breaking change and second is that FAKE is actually the tool that does this differently. The “normal” way that people coming from a Make, Rake or MSBuild background would expect is to define targets and their dependencies, not the explicit execution order.

I opened this issue to provide an alternative to the default way of building the dependency graph, for simple scenarios.