Cake: Build script progress

Question

I'm currently building a Cake build script with interaction to teamcity and I'd like to provide progress messages. I can easily report the task name, but I am unable to find out what the progress is within the build script. Think like ("executing task 1 of 5").

Is there any way to find the progress within the build script?

Answer 1

You could utilize TaskSetup and Tasks which are provided globally on the IScriptHost and always available.

An example of this below:

string target = "A";
int taskCounter = 0;
TaskSetup(
    taskSetupContext => {
        ICakeTaskInfo task = taskSetupContext.Task;
        Information("Executing Task {0} of {1} (Name: {2}, Description: {3}, Dependencies: {4})",
            ++taskCounter,
            Tasks.Count,
            task.Name,
            task.Description,
            string.Join(",",
                    task.Dependencies
                    )
            );
    });


Task("A")
    .Description("Alpha")
    .IsDependentOn("B")
    .Does(()=>{});

Task("B")
    .Description("Beta")
    .IsDependentOn("C")
    .Does(()=>{});

Task("C")
    .Description("Charlie")
    .IsDependentOn("D")
    .Does(()=>{});

Task("D")
    .Description("Delta")
    .Does(()=>{});

RunTarget(target);

The output of this script would be like below:

It's got one flaw though if you got registered tasks not included in the current target they'll count too.

For example, if I add these Tasks:

Task("E")
    .Description("Echo")
    .Does(()=>{});

Task("F")
    .Description("Foxtrot")
    .Does(()=>{});

Output Tasks.Count will be 6 and the output will be like this:

Task graph is internal, albeit not optimal ( but more correct ), you could potentially walk the dependency graph yourself and count how many unique tasks there are, example of that below:

string target = "A";
int taskCounter = 0;
int taskCount = 0;

Setup(context => {
            // declare recursive task count function
            Func<string, List<string>, int> countTask = null;
            countTask = (taskName, countedTasks) => {
                    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(taskName) || countedTasks.Contains(taskName))
                    {
                        return 0;
                    }

                    countedTasks.Add(taskName);

                    var task = Tasks.Where(t=>t.Name == taskName).FirstOrDefault();
                    if (task == null)
                    {
                        return 0;
                    }

                    int result = 1;
                    countedTasks.Add(taskName);
                    foreach(var dependecy in task.Dependencies)
                    {
                        result+=countTask(dependecy, countedTasks);
                    }

                    return result;
            };

        // count the task and store in globally available variable
        taskCount = countTask(target, new List<string>());
    });

TaskSetup(
    taskSetupContext => {
        ICakeTaskInfo task = taskSetupContext.Task;
        Information("Executing Task {0} of {1} (Name: {2}, Description: {3}, Dependencies: {4})",
            ++taskCounter,
            taskCount,
            task.Name,
            task.Description,
            string.Join(",",
                    task.Dependencies
                    )
            );
    });

Task("A")
    .Description("Alpha")
    .IsDependentOn("B")
    .Does(()=>{});

Task("B")
    .Description("Beta")
    .IsDependentOn("C")
    .Does(()=>{});

Task("C")
    .Description("Charlie")
    .IsDependentOn("D")
    .Does(()=>{});

Task("D")
    .Description("Delta")
    .Does(()=>{});

Task("E")
    .Description("Echo")
    .Does(()=>{});

Task("F")
    .Description("Foxtrot")
    .Does(()=>{});


RunTarget(target);

Output of this script would be:

To summarize, what you want can be achieved utilizing:

• Setup task to count Tasks available by given target using an recursive function, storing result in globally available variable.
• TaskSetup to display your message