Task

Appearance

Installation ​

Choose a package manager for your system, or install Task from a binary.

Choose your system

Official packages ​

Maintained by the Task team and kept up-to-date.

Homebrew ​

macOS

Tap sourceHomebrew packageFormula source

shell
brew install go-task/tap/go-task

Or use the Homebrew core formula:

shell
brew install go-task

dnf ​

Fedora · CentOS · Red Hat

View package

Set up the repository:

shell
curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/task/task/setup.rpm.sh' | sudo -E bash

Install Task:

shell
dnf install task

apt ​

Ubuntu · Debian · Linux Mint

View package

Set up the repository:

shell
curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/task/task/setup.deb.sh' | sudo -E bash

Install Task:

shell
apt install task

apk ​

Alpine Linux

View package

Set up the repository:

shell
curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/task/task/setup.alpine.sh' | sudo -E bash

Install Task:

shell
apk add task

Snap ​

Linux

Source

shell
sudo snap install task --classic

Requires a Linux distribution with classic confinement support.

npm ​

macOS · Linux · Windows

View packageSource

shell
npm install -g @go-task/cli

Task is also available as a project dependency.

WinGet ​

Windows

Source

shell
winget install Task.Task

Available through the WinGet community repository.

Package repository hosting for deb/rpm/apk is graciously provided by Cloudsmith.

Community packages ​

Maintained by the community, outside the Task team's control. These packages may lag behind the latest release.

Mise ​

macOS · Linux · Windows

View package

shell
mise use -g task

For a project-local installation, use mise use task instead. This adds Task to your project's mise.toml.

Macports ​

macOS

View packageSource

shell
port install go-task

pip ​

macOS · Linux · Windows

View packageSource

shell
pip install go-task-bin

Chocolatey ​

Windows

View packageSource

shell
choco install go-task

Scoop ​

Windows

Source

shell
scoop install task

Arch (pacman) ​

Arch Linux

View packageSource

shell
pacman -S go-task

Fedora (dnf) ​

Fedora

View packageSource

shell
dnf install go-task

FreeBSD (Ports) ​

FreeBSD

View packageSource

shell
pkg install task

Nix ​

Nix · NixOS · Linux · macOS

Source

shell
nix-env -iA nixpkgs.go-task

pacstall ​

Debian · Ubuntu

View packageSource

shell
pacstall -I go-task-deb

pkgx ​

macOS · Linux

View packageSource

shell
pkgx task

or, if you have pkgx integration enabled:

shell
task

Binaries & CI ​

Install Task without a package manager: download a binary, use the install script, or add the setup action to your GitHub workflow.

Download a binary ​

  1. Open the GitHub releases and download the archive for your operating system and architecture.
  2. Extract task (task.exe on Windows).
  3. Move the executable to a directory on your PATH.

Each release also includes DEB, RPM and APK packages, plus task_checksums.txt with SHA-256 checksums for the release files.

Install with a script ​

Use the install script for a shell-based installation, including CI environments. It downloads a prebuilt binary and verifies its checksum; no Go installation is needed.

By default, the script installs the latest release into ./bin, relative to your current directory. Choose a different directory or pin a release:

shell
sh -c "$(curl --location https://taskfile.dev/install.sh)" -- -d
shell
sh -c "$(curl --location https://taskfile.dev/install.sh)" -- -d -b ~/.local/bin
shell
sh -c "$(curl --location https://taskfile.dev/install.sh)" -- -d v3.42.1
shell
sh -c "$(curl --location https://taskfile.dev/install.sh)" -- -d -b ~/.local/bin v3.42.1

When combining options, keep the release tag last.

Make Task available in your shell

Add the installation directory to your PATH to run task from anywhere. With the default location, you can also run ./bin/task directly.

On Linux, ~/.local/bin and ~/bin are common per-user locations; /usr/local/bin is a system-wide location and may require elevated permissions. Do not assume these directories are already on your PATH, especially on macOS and Windows.

GitHub Actions ​

Add the official setup action to your job's steps before running Task:

yaml
- name: Install Task
  uses: go-task/setup-task@v2

- name: Verify Task
  run: task --version

Use the action's version input to pin a Task release. See the action documentation for examples and configuration.

Build from source ​

Ensure that you have a supported version of Go properly installed and setup. You can find the minimum required version of Go in the go.mod file.

You can then install the latest release globally by running:

shell
go install github.com/go-task/task/v3/cmd/task@latest

Or you can install into another directory:

shell
env GOBIN=/bin go install github.com/go-task/task/v3/cmd/task@latest

TIP

For CI environments we recommend using the install script instead, which is faster and more stable, since it'll just download the latest released binary.

Go Tool ​

If you're working in a Go project, a nice possibility is using go tool. go tool makes it easy to run Task without needing to install the binary manually. This works well on CI.

To do that, just run the following to add Task as a tool in your Go project. Task will be added to your go.mod.

bash
go get -tool github.com/go-task/task/v3/cmd/task@latest

Then, prefix go tool when calling Task like below. Go will compile Task on demand before calling it.

bash
go tool task {arguments...}

Verify installation ​

After installing, open a terminal and check that Task is available:

shell
task --version

If you installed Task with go tool, run go tool task --version instead.

You're ready to create your first Taskfile. You can also enable shell completions below.

Shell completions ​

Some installation methods will automatically install completions too, but if this isn't working for you or your chosen method doesn't include them, you can run task --completion <shell> to output a completion script for any supported shell.

Every shell shares a single source of truth: the script is a thin wrapper that asks the task binary itself what to suggest, so Bash, Zsh, Fish, Nushell and PowerShell all offer the same task names, aliases, flags, flag values and requires vars.

There are a couple of ways these completions can be added to your shell config:

This method loads the completion script from the currently installed version of task every time you create a new shell. This ensures that your completions are always up-to-date. If your executable isn’t named task, set the TASK_EXE environment variable before running eval.

shell
# ~/.bashrc

# export TASK_EXE='go-task' if needed
eval "$(task --completion bash)"
shell
# ~/.zshrc

# export TASK_EXE='go-task' if needed
eval "$(task --completion zsh)"
shell
# ~/.config/fish/config.fish

# export TASK_EXE='go-task' if needed
task --completion fish | source
powershell
# $PROFILE\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1
Invoke-Expression  (&task --completion powershell | Out-String)
nu
# ~/.config/nushell/config.nu
#
# Nushell cannot source a script from stdin, so the script is saved where
# Nushell auto-loads it at startup. Autoload directories are read after
# config.nu, so the completions become available in the next shell.
mkdir ($nu.data-dir | path join "vendor/autoload")
task --completion nu | save --force ($nu.data-dir | path join "vendor/autoload/task-completions.nu")

Option 2. Copy the script to your shell's completions directory ​

This method requires you to manually update the completions whenever Task is updated. However, it is useful if you want to modify the completions yourself.

shell
task --completion bash > /etc/bash_completion.d/task
shell
task --completion zsh  > /usr/local/share/zsh/site-functions/_task
shell
task --completion fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/task.fish
nu
task --completion nu | save --force ($nu.data-dir | path join "vendor/autoload/task-completions.nu")

Zsh customization ​

The Zsh completion supports the standard verbose zstyle to control whether task descriptions are shown. By default, descriptions are displayed. To show only task names without descriptions, add this to your ~/.zshrc (after the completion is loaded):

shell
zstyle ':completion:*:*:task:*' verbose false

By default, task aliases are also offered as completions. To complete only the canonical task names, add the show-aliases zstyle:

shell
zstyle ':completion:*:*:task:*' show-aliases false

Nushell caveats ​

Nushell cannot source a script from stdin, so both options above write the script to an autoload directory. Option 1 rewrites it at every startup, which keeps it in sync with the installed version of Task, and the refreshed completions are picked up by the next shell. With option 2, re-run the command after upgrading Task.

Nushell shares a single external completer between every command, so the script chains to the one already configured — carapace and friends keep working. Load it from an autoload directory as shown above rather than from config.nu, so that your own completer is the one being chained to. If you would rather wire it yourself, the script also exposes a task-external-completer command:

nu
$env.config.completions.external.completer = {|spans|
    match ($spans | first) {
        task => (task-external-completer $spans)
        _ => (do $my_other_completer $spans)
    }
}

Two engine directives behave differently under Nushell by design: it never appends a space after an external completion (so NoSpace is a no-op) and never re-sorts the results (so KeepOrder is always honoured).