Extra side-effects of Project.getTasksByName()?

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I am aware of the limitations of afterEvaluate. The plugin was trying to divide up instances of a large project’s Test tasks into jobs which could be executed in parallel on a Kubernetes cluster. Some of these tasks were created by the Java plugin, but others were created by hand, and only when all projects had been evaluated could the “sub-dividing” process begin.

It seem highly unlikely that someone would need to create a Test task at the very end of the build, but even if they did then we were also in a position to tell them not to instead.

And I am quite sure that this plugin could have been written completely differently from the outset, but that is not where I was starting from. Sometimes evolution presents you with something like a duck-billed platypus and you just have to do what you can in the time available.

Cheers,
Chris

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The plugin was trying to divide up instances of a large project’s Test tasks into jobs which could be executed in parallel on a Kubernetes cluster

Ah, finally the actual problem statement!

You could

  1. Add a subdividing task to the model
  2. use tasks.withType(Test){...} to listen to the task creation event.
  3. Make each test task “dependsOn” the subdividing task
  4. Configure each test task with a Provider that points to the kubernetes node/ingress/load balancer /whatever. This Provider is not initialized at configuration time
  5. When the subdividing task runs during the execution phase, it calculates/populates all the providers. Since all test tasks depend on the subdividing task its guaranteed to run before the tests
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Yes, a lot of that sounds familiar. We also have to generate a Docker image, of course, and choose which kind of Test task (unit, integration or other) we’re targeting. And generate a set of appropriate Gradle command lines.

And then there are the added complications of the “task configuration avoidance” because we don’t want to configure the tests unless we’re actually going to run them.

I can pass your suggestions on to Lord Summerisle, but I strongly suspect he will be far more concerned about next year’s apple harvest.

24 
// TODO: watch The Wicker Man
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Christopher Lee, Edward Woodward, Britt Ekland.

Not Nicholas Cage.

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