How to create keybinds to run a task?

[LordMZTE]

I'm a little unsure of how an ergonomic workflow using overseer looks - currently, after starting my editor, I use :OverseerShell to create a task for building and/or running my program. I then open the output in a vertical split by using :OverseerTaskAction. This has some annoyances:

• The only ways I know of to start the tasks are watching the task and using :OverseerTaskAction and the interactive menu - this is rather tedious if I don't want to watch the task.
• The task output is only for one specific task. Suppose I had two tasks - one for building my code and one for running it. In that case, I'd like the output window to automatically switch to showing the output of the active/last task.

Thus my questions are:

• Is it possible to bind a key to starting a task? I have yet to find a command or API function that starts a given existing task.
• Is it possible to achieve this automatic switching of an output window?
• Is it possible to automatically start a task after another finishes? I think this isn't possible for tasks that have been created "ad-hoc", see bug: dependencies only looks at templates, not tasks #450.

[fin-w]

https://github.com/stevearc/overseer.nvim/blob/master/doc/recipes.md#restart-last-task

[LordMZTE]

This is good to know, but I had something different in mind. I was hoping I could make a command that started a task with a given ID when being run, it could like :OverseerRestart 1 for example, where 1 would be that task's ID.

[stevearc]

Is it possible to bind a key to starting a task? I have yet to find a command or API function that starts a given existing task.

Interesting...so the task already exists and is in PENDING state? Or you're saying this task was created ad-hoc using OverseerShell and it ran to completion, but now you want to re-start it? There is no built-in command for doing this, other than :OverseeerTaskAction -> select task -> start as you've already found. You could build something for this yourself. You can use this recipe as a starting point.

I was hoping I could make a command that started a task with a given ID when being run, it could like :OverseerRestart 1 for example, where 1 would be that task's ID.

Tasks do have IDs and you can use that to filter/find them, but if you're talking about attaching your own ID to a task when it starts, you can put that into the metadata of the task. Then when you do the filtering to find the task to perform an operation on, just check the metadata and look for your ID.

Is it possible to achieve this automatic switching of an output window?

Look at create_task_output_view.

Is it possible to automatically start a task after another finishes? I think this isn't possible for tasks that have been created "ad-hoc", see #450.

If you configure tasks to run sequentially, then restarting the first one should restart and run all the sequential tasks. If you have created two ad-hoc tasks using :OverseerShell and now you want to link them, then again you'll have to build that functionality yourself.