Make mix task available without compiling first?

Questions / Help
1

Is there a way to make a mix task available without compiling my (umbrella) project first?

I tried making it an .exs file, but that didn’t change anything.

If not, how does Phoenix’s phx.new task work? Where it’s like globally installed somehow and always available?

Thanks!

2

Is there a way to make a mix task available without compiling my (umbrella) project first?

Make it a dependency. Then it should be available without compiling project.

I tried making it an .exs file, but that didn’t change anything.

Probably if you would load it within mix.exs then it would be available without compiling, but I am not sure there.

how does Phoenix’s phx.new task work?

Do you remember the step mix archive.install phx_new? This is when it is globally installed.

EDIT

Alternatively you can use aliases with functions instead of strings for that.

3

I’m not sure what you mean. My umbrella looks like this:

umbrella
  apps
     aw
     foo
     bar
     baz

foo, bar, and baz all depend on aw which is where the task is defined.

Thanks!

4

It need to be completely “external” dependency, that is not part of the umbrella.

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5

When you are in a project, then the project has to be in a compilable state. This is just how mix works.

You can though install tasks globally using archives, the y are not allowed to have any dependencies then. And even though they work from outside of a project, they require you to compile the current project if run from within a project.

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