Task Troubleshooting Guide

Here you will find tips and suggestions for making task behave properly, and bug workarounds.


Segmentation Fault for certain commands

Upgrading task to version 1.1.0, 1.2.0 and 1.3.0 can cause segmentation faults. This is mostly occurring for Ubuntu users, although there is no reason for it to be limited to Ubuntu.

Task 1.3.1 fixes this bug, but there is a workaround for users of earlier versions. Add the following line to your ~/.taskrc file:

dateformat=m/d/Y

The "dateformat" setting is supported in task 1.1.0 and later.


How do I build task under Cygwin?

Task is built the same way everywhere. But under Cygwin, you'll need to make sure you have the following packages available first:

  • gcc
  • make
  • libncurses-devel
  • libncurses8
The gcc and make packages allow you to compile the code, and are therefore required, but the ncurses packages are optional. Ncurses will allow task to determine the width of the window, and therefore use the whole width and wrap text accordingly, for a more aesthetically pleasing display.


Do colors work under Cygwin?

They do, but only in a limited way. You can use regular foreground colors (black, red, green ...) and you can regular background colors (on_black, on_red, on_green ...), but underline and bold are not supported.

If you run the command:

% task colors
Task will display all the colors it can use, and you will see which ones you can use.



Copyright 2006-2009, P. Beckingham. All rights reserved.