I have the following task configuration where I’m setting a configurable file tree (“inputFiles”) from to be the outputDirectory of another task, I had guessed that setting this would create a dependency between the two tasks but it doesn’t. Do I have to set built by in this case?

project.tasks.register<PrepareTestSuite>(
    TASK_NAME_PREPARE_SUITE,
).apply {
    configure {
        description = TASK_DESCRIPTION_PREPARE_SUITE
        group = GROUP

        inputFiles.apply {
            from(syncRepositoryTask.flatMap { it.outputDirectory })
            include("**/*.wast")
            exclude("**/proposals/**")
            exclude(extension.excludes.get())
        }

        wast2Json.set(resolveWast2JsonTask.flatMap { it.outputFile })
        outputDirectory.set(extension.testSuiteGenDirectory)
    }
}

Why do you do apply and configure instead of right away

tasks.register(...) { task configuration here }

But anyway, the answer to your question maybe is the

flatMap

. It loses task dependency and replace by the inner provider. So it depends on how the

outputDirectory

is defined. If it is an

@OutputDirectory

it should have the task dependency itself and it should probably work. But hard to say without a complete MCVE.

The answer is I don’t know what I’m doing 🤣 The apply and configure block was just because I was assigning the result of the register task into a variable and configure returns Unit so I couldn’t do that. I’m guessing that these should always be separate?

What should be separate?

Ah I see

It probably should, yes