USER_WORKING_DIR creates unexpected directory

[dvgitit]

• Task version: v3.21.0 (h1:pVGAGXxJ9Pk5mvjqv/CsdAD4ZIzNMjF+vrXMueM/WFk=)
• Operating System: Ubuntu 20.04.5 LTS

Symptoms

Unexpected directory created when using dir: {{.USER_WORKING_DIR}} in a task.

Reproduce

use gist https://gist.github.com/dvgitit/7554e02c75815ac155b3ceb2c283996c

git clone https://gist.github.com/dvgitit/7554e02c75815ac155b3ceb2c283996c test_uwd
cd test_uwd
chmod -R +x *.sh
./create_test_scenario.sh
cd test/test_uwd
./test.sh

directory ../../config/home is unexpected.

[pd93]

Hey @dvgitit, thanks for the repro. It really helped me track this down.

What this boils down to: A task's dir field does not currently support variables that contain an absolute path. Using either a variable (with a relative path), or a static absolute path is fine, but the combination is not functioning as intended.

---

This is the offending line of code:

task/taskfile/read/taskfile.go

Line 143 in c64f881

task.Dir = filepathext.SmartJoin(dir, task.Dir)

Basically, what's happening here is that when we provide filepathext.SmartJoin with a relative path to a task's dir field, we're calling filepath.Join to join it to the directory of the included Taskfile. If it's provided with an absolute path, we just use the given path instead (this is the behaviour that you're expecting).

However, since the task has not been compiled yet, it is not detecting the path as absolute and this means we're treating it as relative and joining /path/to/repo/test_uwd/config with the literal string {{.USER_WORKING_DIR}}.

Later, the task compiler converts this into the full path that you're seeing which makes no sense.

---

As we're supposed to be supporting variables in a task's dir field, I would consider this to be a bug, but we need to carefully consider how to approach a solution since there is currently no way to tell if the variable is an absolute/relative path in this bit of code.

I've recently been working on a change that will completely overhaul this part of the codebase (dag branch). There might be an easier way to solve this in that refactor. I'll have a think about this and post an update soon.

[ghostwheel42]

I'm currently using dir: "/{{.USER_WORKING_DIR}}" to work around this.