Frequently Asked Questions

(Actually, that's a misnomer. These are really Repeatedly Asked Questions.)

Q: When I redirect the output of task to a file, I lose all the colors. How do I fix this?
A: Task knows (or thinks it knows) when the output is not going directly to a terminal, and strips out all the color control characters. Prevent this with the following entry in your .taskrc file:

_forcecolor=on

Q: How do I backup my task data files? Where are they?
A: Task writes all pending tasks to the file ~/.task/pending.data and all completed and deleted tasks to ~/.task/completed.data. They are text files, so they can just be copied to another location for safekeeping. Don't forget there is also the ~/.taskrc file that contains your task configuration data. To be sure, and to future-proof your backup, consider backing up all the files in the ~/.task directory.

Q: How can I separate my work tasks from my home tasks? Specifically, can I keep them completely separate?
A: You can do this by creating an alternate .taskrc file, then using shell aliases. Here is are example Bash commands to achieve this:

% cp ~/.taskrc ~/.taskrc_home
% (now edit .taskrc_home to change the value of data.location)
% alias wtask="task"
% alias htask="task rc:~/.taskrc_home"

This gives you two commands, 'wtask' and 'htask' that operate using two different sets of task data files.

Q: Can I revert to a previous version of task? How?
A: Yes, you can revert to a previous version of task, simply by downloading an older version and installing it. If you find a bug in task, then this may be the only way to work around the bug, until a new release is made.

Note that it is possible that the task file format will change. For example, the format changed between versions 1.5.0 and 1.6.0. Task will automatically upgrade the file but if you need to revert to a previous version of task, there is the file format to consider. This is yet another good reason to back up your task data files!

Q: I'm using Ubuntu 9.04, and I want task to word-wrap descriptions. How do I do this?
A: You need to install ncurses, by doing this:

% sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev

Then you need to rebuild task from scratch, starting with

% cd task-X.X.X
% ./configure
...

The result should be a task program that knows the width of the terminal window, and wraps accordingly.

Q: How do I build task under Cygwin?
A: 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.

Q: Do colors work under Cygwin?
A: 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.

See the color documentation for more details on which colors can be used.