Boot productivity with VScode Tasks.

Earlier I wrote a post where you can customize VScode with 3rd party extensions such as MultiCommand, and CommandRunner .

Recently I opened the magic box of vscode tasks. I will walk though some super helpful workflow I used to do daily in emacs and hoped they exists in vscode.

Custom Tasks

For project level custom tasks, open .vscode/tasks.json . These tasks are only available in current project.

For user custom tasks, go to command palette (F1), type user tasks . These tasks are available across projects.

Quick Switch to Git Main branch

This is a common workflow i do daily, so i can’t stand to use mouse to click. Goto tasks.json . The following task defins a simple task that quickly switch to main

{
  "version": "2.0.0",
  "tasks": [
      {
          "label": "To Main",
          "command": "git checkout main",
          "type": "shell",
          "problemMatcher": []
      }
  ]
}

Quick creation of git branch with custom prefix.

I like to prefix my git branches with whou/1016/ , that is my username and the month and date. This way i can quickly organize my branch and never run out of one time branch names such as quickfix bugfix .

Go to your tasks.json , i choose the user level one.

{
  "version": "2.0.0",
  "tasks": [
      {
          "label": "Create Branch",
          "command": "git checkout -b whou/$(date +'%m%d')/${input:branch-base}",
          "type": "shell",
          "problemMatcher": []
      }
  ],
  "inputs": [
      {
          "id": "branch-base",
          "description": "branch name to create",
          "type": "promptString"
      }
  ]
}

here i define custom task backed by a shell command:

1. (date +%m%d) gives me the current month and date
2. input:branch-base is defined in the inputs section where i prompt user for input.

Invoking this by hitting F1 and type run tasks , then pick the Create Branch, which will prompt you for a branch base, prefix it with username and month/date, then create it in a terminal.

Quick open or create pull request for current branch

Once you are done coding, you need to create PR. VScode GIT extension requires multiple clicks: open git view, open branches, find the right branch, click the create pull request icon.

Thankfully you can go to https://github.com/<owner>/<repo>/pull/<branch-name> and lands in a pull request view or create pull request view.

The following task opens the URL in browser:

{
  "version": "2.0.0",
  "tasks": [
    {
      "label": "Currnet PR",
      "command": "open https://$(git config --get remote.origin.url | sed -E 's|^git@(.*):(.*)/(.*)\\.git$|\\1/\\2/\\3|')/pull/$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)",
      "type": "shell",
      "problemMatcher": []
    }
  ]
}

Conclusion:

Since the tasks can be powered by shell command, the potential is unlimited. You can even write python scripts and invoke it with python... .

Custom tasks fills the gap of quick customization of my IDE, like what i used to do a lot in my emacs.