Tasks

An activity bar pane listing every task your extensions provide, with run and stop.

tasks adds a Tasks pane to the activity bar: one row per task any registered provider offers, each with its source and detail line, and a click to run it or stop it.

import { Workbench, FileSystem } from "codelet/workbench";
import { tasks } from "codelet/extensions/tasks";
import { npm } from "codelet/extensions/npm";
import { terminal } from "codelet/extensions/terminal";
import { justBash } from "codelet/extensions/terminal/just-bash";

new Workbench({
  parent: document.getElementById("app")!,
  fs: new FileSystem({ "/package.json": '{ "scripts": { "build": "tsc" } }' }),
  extensions: [tasks, npm(), terminal(), justBash()],
});

Note

The Tasks icon only appears in the activity bar while there is at least one task to run. Mount tasks on its own with no task provider, and the icon never shows up — that's expected, not a bug: the pane pulls its list from whatever providers are registered, and an empty list means nothing to draw an icon for. Add npm or register a provider of your own and the icon appears with the first task it offers.

#What it adds

A Tasks pane, rows grouped by source (the provider — pnpm, gulp, whatever a task's source says), name and detail per row.
Run and stop on the same row: click an idle task to run it, click it again while it's running to stop it. Stopping ends the task by closing its terminal.
A badge on the activity bar icon, the count of tasks currently running across the whole workbench — visible even with the pane folded away.
A refresh button in the pane's header, for a provider that doesn't tell the pane its list changed.

The pane re-checks its list on its own whenever something is likely to have changed it — an extension starting or stopping, the workspace switching, files being written while the pane isn't showing — so pressing refresh is rarely necessary, but it's there.

#Where tasks come from

tasks draws whatever vscode.tasks.fetchTasks() returns. It ships no provider of its own. codelet/extensions/npm is the built-in one, reading the workspace's package.json scripts. An extension of yours can register another with vscode.tasks.registerTaskProvider — see Tasks, source control and terminals for the provider API and how a task actually runs.