Can't run hex mix tasks in alias

Is the aliases function actually called inside mix.exs?

I think so? All my other non-hex mix tasks work just fine there as aliases.

@dimitarvp I think I may have misunderstood your question. Yes, I’m calling it inside mix.exs. I initially thought you were asking if that’s what I should be doing. Like I said above, non-hex aliases are working. So for instance this works:

defp aliases do
  [
    setup: ["deps.get", "deps.compile", "ecto.reset", "assets.setup", "assets.build"]
  ]
end

A-ha, I see. Was just making sure. A drive-by contribution if you will.

Is there anyone else that can help with this? I considered using elixirc_paths, but I don’t know what path I would give it, since the hex files are already compiled.

I just tried your initial example on a project and it seemed to work just fine.

Okay, so apparently my example wasn’t specific enough.
Upon further examination, the hex mix task has to be at least the third in line in the list. The list can have more than three items in it as long as the hex mix task is number one or two. So for example this works:

defp aliases do
    [
      testtask: ["deps.get", "hex.audit", "deps.compile"]
    ]
end

But this does not:

defp aliases do
    [
      testtask: ["deps.get", "deps.compile", "hex.audit"]
    ]
end

It results in:

** (Mix) The task "hex.audit" could not be found. Did you mean "deps.audit"?

I don’t have a solution, but I was able to reproduce it and note a few things:

1. If hex.audit is the first task in the alias, it works
2. If you only alias hex tasks (for example ["hex.info", "hex.audit"]) - it also works

So it would seem that deps tasks somehow disable them

It’s actually not specific to deps; any non-hex tasks (as you discovered) will cause a failure. For example:

defp aliases do
    [
      testtask3: ["format", "compile", "hex.audit"],
    ]
end

So I traced it down to the fact that after running any non-hex task Code.ensure_loaded(Mix.Tasks.Hex.Audit) returns {:error, :nofile}. But if no other non-hex task was run before, it returns {:module, Mix.Tasks.Hex.Info}. Unfortunately I don’t know why is that, but maybe someone more knowledgeable would have some idea.