9 ms·

Taskwarrior – intelligent TODO list

152 points by albertzeyer 11y ago

ywecur 11y ago
While this is a decent tool, it doesn't come close to the power of org-mode in terms of implementing task management systems such as GTD. Still, if you're not an Emacs user and want a FOSS task management system this is the way to go.
- toolslive 11y ago
  care to make a more detailed comparison between this and org mode ?
  - tines 11y ago
    I too would like to hear about how org-mode is an effective task manager. On its face, it seems like grandparent is saying "This doesn't compare with the power of Markdown for managing to-dos." One is a tool, the other is a formatting language.
    - Jtsummers 11y ago
      Org mode is a tool. It's got a formatting language in it, but it provides calendar, schedule, time tracking, workflow management, and more.
    - hsitz 11y ago
      If you're implying that TaskWarrior is a tool and that org-mode is a formatting language (or file format), then you're way off to begin with. Org-mode does have a specific format for its files. But much of its power derives from the tools it incorporates. E.g., the org-mode Agenda functionality enables complex searches over multiple files and collects and orders the results in a single buffer, and allows users to perform operations on the results (i.e., on the original buffers containing the results) directly from the Agenda buffer. There's much, much, more. Org-mode is primarily a tool, not a file format. If you want an overview of some of its functionality, you can take a look here: http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html
    - maaku 11y ago
      Org-mode has embraced the emacs philosophy with respect to workflow management. It is a document formatting language which has been co-opted into doing pretty much all aspects of workflow management -- tasks, reminders, calendars, etc. I personally don't think it does a very good job, but some people swear by it.
      - ProfDreamer 11y ago
        > I personally don't think it does a very good job [...] Why do you think so? Would you care to elaborate?
        timroy 11y ago
        I posted above why I like Org-Mode. Here are a few things it doesn't do well. 1. Because it is text-based, its visual summaries are limited. Like, there's a calendar, and for org-habits a simple color-coded chart to show consistency, but that's about it. If you're looking a week or a month ahead to visually see how many tasks you have coming up, the org-agenda is text-based. 2. While org-mode can sync with Trello, Beeminder, and a couple other task-management systems, its integrations are pretty limited. If you want to integrate with Contacts or whatever you'll have to work a bit. 3. org-mode's part of Emacs, so you'll need to be comfortable with Emacs. Contrast this with Sunrise Calendar. Sunrise Calendar grabs gmail messages and appointments, iCal, google calendar, and displays them all nicely. Pluses and minuses, depends on your needs and what you like.
  - ywecur 11y ago
    I'm not the most familiar with either, but one of the simplest differences is that org-mode allows you to have entries longer than single lines and have it formatted. This is immensely more helpful when implementing GTD IMO. Org-mode can also easily become your calendar as well, which Taskwarrior cannot.
    - nextos 11y ago
      The only thing I miss in org-mode is a more powerful domain-specific language for events. Like remind, which is a very nice Unix GPLed utility: https://www.roaringpenguin.com/products/remind https://www.roaringpenguin.com/products/remind
    - tingol 11y ago
      Why not? Taskwarrior has time scheduling, due dates and a calendar.
      - zeckalpha 11y ago
        Not at a level lower than a day.
- timroy 11y ago
  Because a couple people here have expressed curiosity, here's what I like about org-mode. 1. The workflow is key. From any document, if I want to note down a task, I use org-capture. This creates a to-do item in To-Do.org. Alternatively, I can use org-capture to create a blog post, or an item for org-drill, or whatever. In either case, I don't break my flow of thought. org-capture to create a new task looks like the equivalent of "task add" on Taskwarrior, except you do it from anywhere inside Emacs, not from the command line. 2. The org agenda shows all upcoming scheduled tasks. I also use org-habit, which are just repeating tasks that show how often you've completed them (and can prompt for a note when you mark it as done - "30 pushups" for TODO: exercise, or whatever). 3. I can "clock in" on a task in To-Do, and when I'm done archive the task in an automatically-created archive file. I can then see total time worked on that day, broken down by task. When clocking in, org prompts me for a time estimate. 4. Because all tasks are just bullet-points, I can nest sub-tasks, and expand or collapse them, like the app Workflowy. The top-level task can show percent or fraction of sub-tasks completed. 5. Best of all, at the end of the day, and despite all this manipulation, it's just text. I can edit time spent on a task, or whatever. There's no hidden magic. This workflow is pretty GTD-ish, because it helps you get everything out of your head on the fly, and break things down into sub-tasks. It also works well with SRS and incremental reading. I see myself sticking with this, but I've used other systems productively, so whatever floats your boat.
- ek9 11y ago
  It allows you to implement GTD or pomodoro. I admit it will take a few hours to do or get a hang of, but it's among one of the goals of Taskwarrior to stay methodology agnostic.
edward 11y ago
And on Android: https://bitbucket.org/kvorobyev/taskwarriorandroid https://bitbucket.org/kvorobyev/taskwarriorandroid
- phillc73 11y ago
  On the official project website I could only find this repository link and the link to Google Play Store for the pre-built Android binary. However, it is available on F-Droid[0]. I wonder why Taskwarrior doesn't promote this, with the parent project being open source and F-Droid specifically for such Android projects. [0] https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=taskwarrior&fdid=kvj.taskw https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=taskwarrior&...
Numberwang 11y ago
A bit unrelated, but are people actually getting anything out of personal task managers and ToDo lists? Supposedly they are to help me do the right thing at the right time and not worry too much. I've started to believe part one of that problem manages itself more or less and part two just get's worse and worse by trying to be organized with projects, lables, calendars, ideas and ambitions. I'm currently thinking maybe I should encrypt all my notes and make the password unavailable for me for the next year or so whilst I try starting every day with a blank page.
- nextos 11y ago
  I very much prefer organization systems that help me prioritize. I think a kanban, with its work-in-progress limits, is a much better task list. One can achieve such a thing quite easily in org-mode.
- mbrock 11y ago
  They don't have any causal power to make you actually do the things you set out to or should do, but they can be a useful way to organize and keep track of your tasks and deadlines if you have more than a handful of them. My personal life outside mostly consists of eating, sleeping, having fun, and the occasional visit to the dentist, so I don't need a computer program to manage it. Procrastination trivially circumvents any system by simply ignoring it, and it's possible to go overboard with micromanaging yourself to the extent that you spend more time fiddling with your "Getting Things Done" setup than you do actually doing things... But for example, with the very small business I own with my brother, setting up a Trello board and using it to keep track of various bureaucratic errands very clearly improved our efficiency.
- jethro_tell 11y ago
  I use them for continuity. I'll see something that annoys me or needs to get done. Anything from needing to add a window manager key bind to a bug that needs to be fixed. I'll add it to my list. Then I work on the big and pressing tasks of the day, but when I have 10 minutes I can go back through the list and pick a task and knock it out. Anything I'm working on at close of business gets added to the top of the list so I don't forget about it when I start tomorrow. I don't really prioritize or sort just track things so I can think about other things.
awwaiid 11y ago
If you are getting started with taskwarrior, I recommend starting out with a very very minimal usage of the features, and then gradually add in the ones you like/need. Otherwise, like many cool advanced tools (vim, emacs...) you might get overwhelmed and abandon it.
great_kraken 11y ago
I tried using Taskwarrior with sync to Mirakel last year, as a free replacement once my Todoist trial ended. The sync didn't function correctly, and notifications weren't reliable. Ended up paying for Todoist. It's a real shame, because I much prefer going with free & open source solutions whenever possible.
- pbeckingham 11y ago
  Mirakel doesn't work with Taskwarrior, and they stopped supporting it a while ago. There is a much better alternative.
  - claudius 11y ago
    Hm. Mirakel 3.0 apparently doesn’t work, but 2.8.2 is still on F-Droid. Compared to the "Taskwarrior" app there, it seems much more polished, with the Taskwarrior app, I have a hard time figuring out how to e.g. add subtasks to a problem (or even hide existing subtasks from cluttering everything). Do you have an even better alternative?
stewbrew 11y ago
Why would I want to choose Taskwarrior over todo.txt?
- dmix 11y ago
  I've tried all of the Unixy tasks managers* and vim-tasks works well for me: https://github.com/irrationalistic/vim-tasks https://github.com/irrationalistic/vim-tasks Any file with .tasks turns into a todo list with keyboard shortcuts to create/complete tasks. Which is useful when adding them to projects on github. I don't bother with trying to have one sync with mobile anymore. Simpler the better. * I still need to try out org-mode
  - IanCal 11y ago
    That looks great, thanks. I generally live inside vim, and this looks like a nice, simple solution.
  - cpro 11y ago
    I, too, have build a task manage with Vim support: https://github.com/prophittcorey/t.rb https://github.com/prophittcorey/t.rb https://github.com/prophittcorey/vim-t https://github.com/prophittcorey/vim-t I did it for the same reasons-- simpler is better, focus on finishing tasks and not organizing them. The more I can stay inside Vim and not out of it, the better! I didn't add any history support because all of the tasks are stored in .tasks.json, if you want history, just check it into git and bam, history.
gglitch 11y ago
In another comment thread on Taskwarrior, someone more intelligent than me suggested just using plain dirs and files, one file per task. Then you get all of Unix for free, with any metadata you want as part of the filename or contents. I'm a former org-mode user who now just uses a paper book, but if I still wanted to use a computer, dirs+files would be hard to beat. One or more folders for todo, one or more folders for done, stick it all in Dropbox.
- maaku 11y ago
  That is brilliant. Thank you.
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  Why would you use something like Dropbox over git?
  - gglitch 11y ago
    Whatever tool chain you want, that's part of the attractiveness of the idea. I doubt I'd ever do much but touch, ls, mv, cat, and find, and I doubt I'd need version control.
  - tedmiston 11y ago
    Unless you automate commits, using git is quite a bit of process overhead when you're just adding one item to your inbox or checking one item done.
    - jsprogrammer 11y ago
      I have written scripts to automate commits. What I'd really like is to keep a history of every modification I make. Having that history already in a git repo just seems like bonus.
  - CJefferson 11y ago
    Dropbox does transparent updates between my computer's and phone, all I have to do is remember to save. With git I need to remember to pull before Editting, and commit+push after changing. As I only use one machine at a time, merging isn't really useful.
rndstr 11y ago
Haven't tried it but for CLI apps, numbered references to items (named ID in taskwarrior) are often troubling for me. In the Quick Demonstration[0] it seems that deleting will re-number the items but doing $ task 1 done $ task 2 done and then `task list` should actually lead to 1 Buy eggs shouldn't it? or then 3 Bake cake if IDs are kept [0]: https://taskwarrior.org/docs/start.html https://taskwarrior.org/docs/start.html
- hjgrtrtr 11y ago
  IDs are kept in between the runs
- cpro 11y ago
  I am not 100% sure how Taskwarrior does it, but when I built my own dead simple task manager (for people that want to finish tasks and not organize them), I gave the tasks random unique IDs. https://github.com/prophittcorey/t.rb https://github.com/prophittcorey/t.rb
- lgas 11y ago
  This same thing bothered me, so I installed task warrior to try it out. It appears that "task list" actually has a side effect of re-numbering the IDs. So the example is actually correct behavior, but if you issue an extra "task list" command in between "task 1 done" and "task 2 done" then yes, you would the result you expected. This (IMHO) terrible design is what will keep me away from task warrior.
  - fvargas 11y ago
    Why is this "terrible design"? I'm not a Taskwarrior user, but I did read through their introduction and didn't notice this perhaps odd behavior in the example until reading this comment thread. Looking at it again, I concluded that either the id associations last observed by the user are the ones that get used, or that the example was simply incorrect. As you discovered, the id associations are based on what the user last observed when running task list, which may feel like an unnecessary complexity. But consider the alternative. A user runs task list and wants to mark as done multiple tasks. After marking the first task as done, they would need to start calculating offsets for the next task. After doing that a few times, your task list might suddenly have multiple gaps in it, which would make it unnecessarily difficult to precisely calculate what the current id is for an item that was initially in the middle of your list. Maybe you deleted 4 items before it and 6 items after it. So, 10 deletions in, how many seconds is it going to take for you to figure out precisely what id you need to be deleting next? It makes sense for the id associations to correspond to those last observed. A user is likely to run task list right before deleting anything and then run a series of done commands. Thus, this feature is a far simpler and quite essential solution to the problem I described above. The alternatives would be to keep track of exactly how you're mutating the task list, or run task list between every few deletions to avoid making a mistake. > This (IMHO) terrible design is what will keep me away from task warrior. I could understand not wanting to give it a try due to lack of this feature. But I think your conclusion is greatly misguided.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
dhagz 11y ago
So, I went to the downloads page to see how I can get it on my laptop. I have a MacBook Pro, so I scroll down looking to see if there's anything for OSX's package managers...and there's 3 different Homebrew packages listed, each with a different name. Do they conflict? Are they all needed? Why isn't there just a plain `brew install taskwarrior`? It's a little off-putting.
- tunesmith 11y ago
  I just have task installed, 'brew install task'.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- ywecur 11y ago
  >Why isn't there just a plain `brew install task warrior`? That would be `brew install task`. I'm guessing their thinking is that brew isn't part of OS X, though this is silly IMO. Homebrew is basically a requirement if you own a Mac and want to use the command line at all.
- fvargas 11y ago
  Running `brew info <formula>` for each of the three available formulae would have answered your question. `brew install task` is what you want for the regular Taskwarrior.
covi 11y ago
As a Google Inbox user, I've found its reminder features to be very good for these kinds of day-to-day tasks.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  Also, Google Keep has reminders note that integrates with Android timer.
- Scarbutt 11y ago
  That's just for your phone no?
  - covi 11y ago
    You can access it on desktop/laptop too.
  - anamoulous 11y ago
    https://inbox.google.com/ https://inbox.google.com/ They've created a weird extension to save pages into Inbox, too: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/inbox-by-gmail/gkljgfmjocfalijkgoogmfffkhmkbgol?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/inbox-by-gmail/gkl...
kusanagiblade 11y ago
Just out of curiosity, who really uses this thing day-to-day? And why???? I can't even be disciplined enough to use my to-doist app on phone. No!!!!!!!
- tsahyt 11y ago
  I do. I've got the server counterpart set up on a Linode and sync my task lists across all devices. That's quite nifty because I usually think of things that I should be doing while I'm on the go. At the moment I need this kind of organization to get anything done, and out of all the solutions I've tried this one is by far the best. The feature I use the most is probably the scheduling feature. After dinner I'll sit down for a moment and contemplate which of the tasks I've still got open I will do the next day and schedule them accordingly. The next morning I do a `scheduled:today` query and I've basically got half the day laid out in front of me already. The best part of it though is that by running my own task server (at no additional cost because the same box doubles as my mail server), all the data belongs to me instead of relying on a third party.
- nanobit 11y ago
  Productive people will not waste their time on hacker news anyway. So, this is not for productivity, but for time wasting.
soyiuz 11y ago
An impressive tool and website. Like others in this thread I use a plain txt file + git to manage my todos. Simplicity trumps any other feature for me. Unix tools are a bonus.
lambdasue 11y ago
For all plain-text file lovers out there, there's actually quite a good tool that combines both the power of plain text files (i.e. Markdown) and taskwarrior called taskwiki [1]. Provides the best of the both worlds to me, tasks in plain text files synced to TW -> synced to Taskserver -> synced to mobile app. I can also use all the power of Taskwarrior directly on the command line. [1] https://github.com/tbabej/taskwiki https://github.com/tbabej/taskwiki
jvehent 11y ago
I use taskwarrior with bugwarrior [1] to automatically maintain a list of pending bugs/issues and pull requests assigned to me. The initial setup takes a couple hours, but it's a great way to track stuff spread across dozens of locations. [1] http://bugwarrior.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ http://bugwarrior.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
julian_t 11y ago
I've started using TW and find it great for the simple to-do list stuff I need, with enough control over dependencies and scheduling. I've tried org mode, but I just don't get on with the emacs way of working. TW, as a simple command line tool, integrates well with scripts and other apps, and a Ubersicht plugin displays the task list on my OS X desktop. One thing that does drive me nuts, though, is its habit of changing task IDs. I know why it works like that, but it makes it harder to work with.
tomlong 11y ago
I've written about 5 programs about 30% as functional as this... I can't believe I didn't know about it. Been using google keep for a while, but going to try and live with this for a bit.
ytjohn 11y ago
I use this pretty extensively for work. I don't really need to keep a todo list for home things, or if I do, pen and paper is the most ideal. At work, we use Jira for task management. My philosophy is that taskwarrior is what I use to track things. Jira is what I use so that my team members and management can track things. So when a bit of work comes my way, whether via slack, email, or other methods, I add that to taskwarrior. I then use the tool bugwarrior to pull down my jira tasks (every 15 minutes or on demand). If I end up entering a TW task in Jira, I mark the TW version done. I can use TW itself to set task priority, assign tags, or move into "projects" according to my view of the work needing accomplished. I did look into using the TW hooks and a python jira library to manipulate jira tasks using the task command. It was technically doable, but I feel I'd always be fiddling with the logical side (each jira project has different workflows for moving a task through statuses, some requiring acceptance criteria at the end). Instead, I either use jira-cli, or just edit the task in jira.
satysin 11y ago
A little off-topic but this [1] screenshot from their homepage really shows how things are today with OS X running Windows 10 in a VM which is in turn running Bash on Ubuntu on Windows. Haha [1] https://taskwarrior.org/news/images/win10.png https://taskwarrior.org/news/images/win10.png
- ywecur 11y ago
  It's nice that they actually went through the effort to show that it works well on GNU/Windows!

152 points by albertzeyer 11y ago

While this is a decent tool, it doesn't come close to the power of org-mode in terms of implementing task management systems such as GTD. Still, if you're not an Emacs user and want a FOSS task management system this is the way to go.

toolslive 11y ago
care to make a more detailed comparison between this and org mode ?
- tines 11y ago
  I too would like to hear about how org-mode is an effective task manager. On its face, it seems like grandparent is saying "This doesn't compare with the power of Markdown for managing to-dos." One is a tool, the other is a formatting language.
  - Jtsummers 11y ago
    Org mode is a tool. It's got a formatting language in it, but it provides calendar, schedule, time tracking, workflow management, and more.
  - hsitz 11y ago
    If you're implying that TaskWarrior is a tool and that org-mode is a formatting language (or file format), then you're way off to begin with. Org-mode does have a specific format for its files. But much of its power derives from the tools it incorporates. E.g., the org-mode Agenda functionality enables complex searches over multiple files and collects and orders the results in a single buffer, and allows users to perform operations on the results (i.e., on the original buffers containing the results) directly from the Agenda buffer. There's much, much, more. Org-mode is primarily a tool, not a file format. If you want an overview of some of its functionality, you can take a look here: http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html
  - maaku 11y ago
    Org-mode has embraced the emacs philosophy with respect to workflow management. It is a document formatting language which has been co-opted into doing pretty much all aspects of workflow management -- tasks, reminders, calendars, etc. I personally don't think it does a very good job, but some people swear by it.
    - ProfDreamer 11y ago
      > I personally don't think it does a very good job [...] Why do you think so? Would you care to elaborate?
      - timroy 11y ago
        I posted above why I like Org-Mode. Here are a few things it doesn't do well. 1. Because it is text-based, its visual summaries are limited. Like, there's a calendar, and for org-habits a simple color-coded chart to show consistency, but that's about it. If you're looking a week or a month ahead to visually see how many tasks you have coming up, the org-agenda is text-based. 2. While org-mode can sync with Trello, Beeminder, and a couple other task-management systems, its integrations are pretty limited. If you want to integrate with Contacts or whatever you'll have to work a bit. 3. org-mode's part of Emacs, so you'll need to be comfortable with Emacs. Contrast this with Sunrise Calendar. Sunrise Calendar grabs gmail messages and appointments, iCal, google calendar, and displays them all nicely. Pluses and minuses, depends on your needs and what you like.
- ywecur 11y ago
  I'm not the most familiar with either, but one of the simplest differences is that org-mode allows you to have entries longer than single lines and have it formatted. This is immensely more helpful when implementing GTD IMO. Org-mode can also easily become your calendar as well, which Taskwarrior cannot.
  - nextos 11y ago
    The only thing I miss in org-mode is a more powerful domain-specific language for events. Like remind, which is a very nice Unix GPLed utility: https://www.roaringpenguin.com/products/remind https://www.roaringpenguin.com/products/remind
  - tingol 11y ago
    Why not? Taskwarrior has time scheduling, due dates and a calendar.
    - zeckalpha 11y ago
      Not at a level lower than a day.
timroy 11y ago
Because a couple people here have expressed curiosity, here's what I like about org-mode. 1. The workflow is key. From any document, if I want to note down a task, I use org-capture. This creates a to-do item in To-Do.org. Alternatively, I can use org-capture to create a blog post, or an item for org-drill, or whatever. In either case, I don't break my flow of thought. org-capture to create a new task looks like the equivalent of "task add" on Taskwarrior, except you do it from anywhere inside Emacs, not from the command line. 2. The org agenda shows all upcoming scheduled tasks. I also use org-habit, which are just repeating tasks that show how often you've completed them (and can prompt for a note when you mark it as done - "30 pushups" for TODO: exercise, or whatever). 3. I can "clock in" on a task in To-Do, and when I'm done archive the task in an automatically-created archive file. I can then see total time worked on that day, broken down by task. When clocking in, org prompts me for a time estimate. 4. Because all tasks are just bullet-points, I can nest sub-tasks, and expand or collapse them, like the app Workflowy. The top-level task can show percent or fraction of sub-tasks completed. 5. Best of all, at the end of the day, and despite all this manipulation, it's just text. I can edit time spent on a task, or whatever. There's no hidden magic. This workflow is pretty GTD-ish, because it helps you get everything out of your head on the fly, and break things down into sub-tasks. It also works well with SRS and incremental reading. I see myself sticking with this, but I've used other systems productively, so whatever floats your boat.
ek9 11y ago
It allows you to implement GTD or pomodoro. I admit it will take a few hours to do or get a hang of, but it's among one of the goals of Taskwarrior to stay methodology agnostic.

edward 11y ago

And on Android: https://bitbucket.org/kvorobyev/taskwarriorandroid https://bitbucket.org/kvorobyev/taskwarriorandroid

phillc73 11y ago
On the official project website I could only find this repository link and the link to Google Play Store for the pre-built Android binary. However, it is available on F-Droid[0]. I wonder why Taskwarrior doesn't promote this, with the parent project being open source and F-Droid specifically for such Android projects. [0] https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=taskwarrior&fdid=kvj.taskw https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=taskwarrior&...

Numberwang 11y ago

A bit unrelated, but are people actually getting anything out of personal task managers and ToDo lists? Supposedly they are to help me do the right thing at the right time and not worry too much. I've started to believe part one of that problem manages itself more or less and part two just get's worse and worse by trying to be organized with projects, lables, calendars, ideas and ambitions. I'm currently thinking maybe I should encrypt all my notes and make the password unavailable for me for the next year or so whilst I try starting every day with a blank page.

nextos 11y ago
I very much prefer organization systems that help me prioritize. I think a kanban, with its work-in-progress limits, is a much better task list. One can achieve such a thing quite easily in org-mode.
mbrock 11y ago
They don't have any causal power to make you actually do the things you set out to or should do, but they can be a useful way to organize and keep track of your tasks and deadlines if you have more than a handful of them. My personal life outside mostly consists of eating, sleeping, having fun, and the occasional visit to the dentist, so I don't need a computer program to manage it. Procrastination trivially circumvents any system by simply ignoring it, and it's possible to go overboard with micromanaging yourself to the extent that you spend more time fiddling with your "Getting Things Done" setup than you do actually doing things... But for example, with the very small business I own with my brother, setting up a Trello board and using it to keep track of various bureaucratic errands very clearly improved our efficiency.
jethro_tell 11y ago
I use them for continuity. I'll see something that annoys me or needs to get done. Anything from needing to add a window manager key bind to a bug that needs to be fixed. I'll add it to my list. Then I work on the big and pressing tasks of the day, but when I have 10 minutes I can go back through the list and pick a task and knock it out. Anything I'm working on at close of business gets added to the top of the list so I don't forget about it when I start tomorrow. I don't really prioritize or sort just track things so I can think about other things.

awwaiid 11y ago

If you are getting started with taskwarrior, I recommend starting out with a very very minimal usage of the features, and then gradually add in the ones you like/need. Otherwise, like many cool advanced tools (vim, emacs...) you might get overwhelmed and abandon it.

great_kraken 11y ago

I tried using Taskwarrior with sync to Mirakel last year, as a free replacement once my Todoist trial ended. The sync didn't function correctly, and notifications weren't reliable. Ended up paying for Todoist. It's a real shame, because I much prefer going with free & open source solutions whenever possible.

pbeckingham 11y ago
Mirakel doesn't work with Taskwarrior, and they stopped supporting it a while ago. There is a much better alternative.
- claudius 11y ago
  Hm. Mirakel 3.0 apparently doesn’t work, but 2.8.2 is still on F-Droid. Compared to the "Taskwarrior" app there, it seems much more polished, with the Taskwarrior app, I have a hard time figuring out how to e.g. add subtasks to a problem (or even hide existing subtasks from cluttering everything). Do you have an even better alternative?

stewbrew 11y ago

Why would I want to choose Taskwarrior over todo.txt?

dmix 11y ago
I've tried all of the Unixy tasks managers* and vim-tasks works well for me: https://github.com/irrationalistic/vim-tasks https://github.com/irrationalistic/vim-tasks Any file with .tasks turns into a todo list with keyboard shortcuts to create/complete tasks. Which is useful when adding them to projects on github. I don't bother with trying to have one sync with mobile anymore. Simpler the better. * I still need to try out org-mode
- IanCal 11y ago
  That looks great, thanks. I generally live inside vim, and this looks like a nice, simple solution.
- cpro 11y ago
  I, too, have build a task manage with Vim support: https://github.com/prophittcorey/t.rb https://github.com/prophittcorey/t.rb https://github.com/prophittcorey/vim-t https://github.com/prophittcorey/vim-t I did it for the same reasons-- simpler is better, focus on finishing tasks and not organizing them. The more I can stay inside Vim and not out of it, the better! I didn't add any history support because all of the tasks are stored in .tasks.json, if you want history, just check it into git and bam, history.

gglitch 11y ago

In another comment thread on Taskwarrior, someone more intelligent than me suggested just using plain dirs and files, one file per task. Then you get all of Unix for free, with any metadata you want as part of the filename or contents. I'm a former org-mode user who now just uses a paper book, but if I still wanted to use a computer, dirs+files would be hard to beat. One or more folders for todo, one or more folders for done, stick it all in Dropbox.

maaku 11y ago
That is brilliant. Thank you.
jsprogrammer 11y ago
Why would you use something like Dropbox over git?
- gglitch 11y ago
  Whatever tool chain you want, that's part of the attractiveness of the idea. I doubt I'd ever do much but touch, ls, mv, cat, and find, and I doubt I'd need version control.
- tedmiston 11y ago
  Unless you automate commits, using git is quite a bit of process overhead when you're just adding one item to your inbox or checking one item done.
  - jsprogrammer 11y ago
    I have written scripts to automate commits. What I'd really like is to keep a history of every modification I make. Having that history already in a git repo just seems like bonus.
- CJefferson 11y ago
  Dropbox does transparent updates between my computer's and phone, all I have to do is remember to save. With git I need to remember to pull before Editting, and commit+push after changing. As I only use one machine at a time, merging isn't really useful.

rndstr 11y ago

Haven't tried it but for CLI apps, numbered references to items (named ID in taskwarrior) are often troubling for me. In the Quick Demonstration[0] it seems that deleting will re-number the items but doing $ task 1 done $ task 2 done and then `task list` should actually lead to 1 Buy eggs shouldn't it? or then 3 Bake cake if IDs are kept [0]: https://taskwarrior.org/docs/start.html https://taskwarrior.org/docs/start.html

hjgrtrtr 11y ago
IDs are kept in between the runs
cpro 11y ago
I am not 100% sure how Taskwarrior does it, but when I built my own dead simple task manager (for people that want to finish tasks and not organize them), I gave the tasks random unique IDs. https://github.com/prophittcorey/t.rb https://github.com/prophittcorey/t.rb
lgas 11y ago
This same thing bothered me, so I installed task warrior to try it out. It appears that "task list" actually has a side effect of re-numbering the IDs. So the example is actually correct behavior, but if you issue an extra "task list" command in between "task 1 done" and "task 2 done" then yes, you would the result you expected. This (IMHO) terrible design is what will keep me away from task warrior.
- fvargas 11y ago
  Why is this "terrible design"? I'm not a Taskwarrior user, but I did read through their introduction and didn't notice this perhaps odd behavior in the example until reading this comment thread. Looking at it again, I concluded that either the id associations last observed by the user are the ones that get used, or that the example was simply incorrect. As you discovered, the id associations are based on what the user last observed when running task list, which may feel like an unnecessary complexity. But consider the alternative. A user runs task list and wants to mark as done multiple tasks. After marking the first task as done, they would need to start calculating offsets for the next task. After doing that a few times, your task list might suddenly have multiple gaps in it, which would make it unnecessarily difficult to precisely calculate what the current id is for an item that was initially in the middle of your list. Maybe you deleted 4 items before it and 6 items after it. So, 10 deletions in, how many seconds is it going to take for you to figure out precisely what id you need to be deleting next? It makes sense for the id associations to correspond to those last observed. A user is likely to run task list right before deleting anything and then run a series of done commands. Thus, this feature is a far simpler and quite essential solution to the problem I described above. The alternatives would be to keep track of exactly how you're mutating the task list, or run task list between every few deletions to avoid making a mistake. > This (IMHO) terrible design is what will keep me away from task warrior. I could understand not wanting to give it a try due to lack of this feature. But I think your conclusion is greatly misguided.

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dhagz 11y ago

So, I went to the downloads page to see how I can get it on my laptop. I have a MacBook Pro, so I scroll down looking to see if there's anything for OSX's package managers...and there's 3 different Homebrew packages listed, each with a different name. Do they conflict? Are they all needed? Why isn't there just a plain `brew install taskwarrior`? It's a little off-putting.

tunesmith 11y ago
I just have task installed, 'brew install task'.
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ywecur 11y ago
>Why isn't there just a plain `brew install task warrior`? That would be `brew install task`. I'm guessing their thinking is that brew isn't part of OS X, though this is silly IMO. Homebrew is basically a requirement if you own a Mac and want to use the command line at all.
fvargas 11y ago
Running `brew info <formula>` for each of the three available formulae would have answered your question. `brew install task` is what you want for the regular Taskwarrior.

covi 11y ago

As a Google Inbox user, I've found its reminder features to be very good for these kinds of day-to-day tasks.

agumonkey 11y ago
Also, Google Keep has reminders note that integrates with Android timer.
Scarbutt 11y ago
That's just for your phone no?
- covi 11y ago
  You can access it on desktop/laptop too.
- anamoulous 11y ago
  https://inbox.google.com/ https://inbox.google.com/ They've created a weird extension to save pages into Inbox, too: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/inbox-by-gmail/gkljgfmjocfalijkgoogmfffkhmkbgol?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/inbox-by-gmail/gkl...

kusanagiblade 11y ago

Just out of curiosity, who really uses this thing day-to-day? And why???? I can't even be disciplined enough to use my to-doist app on phone. No!!!!!!!

tsahyt 11y ago
I do. I've got the server counterpart set up on a Linode and sync my task lists across all devices. That's quite nifty because I usually think of things that I should be doing while I'm on the go. At the moment I need this kind of organization to get anything done, and out of all the solutions I've tried this one is by far the best. The feature I use the most is probably the scheduling feature. After dinner I'll sit down for a moment and contemplate which of the tasks I've still got open I will do the next day and schedule them accordingly. The next morning I do a `scheduled:today` query and I've basically got half the day laid out in front of me already. The best part of it though is that by running my own task server (at no additional cost because the same box doubles as my mail server), all the data belongs to me instead of relying on a third party.
nanobit 11y ago
Productive people will not waste their time on hacker news anyway. So, this is not for productivity, but for time wasting.

soyiuz 11y ago

An impressive tool and website. Like others in this thread I use a plain txt file + git to manage my todos. Simplicity trumps any other feature for me. Unix tools are a bonus.

lambdasue 11y ago

For all plain-text file lovers out there, there's actually quite a good tool that combines both the power of plain text files (i.e. Markdown) and taskwarrior called taskwiki [1]. Provides the best of the both worlds to me, tasks in plain text files synced to TW -> synced to Taskserver -> synced to mobile app. I can also use all the power of Taskwarrior directly on the command line. [1] https://github.com/tbabej/taskwiki https://github.com/tbabej/taskwiki

jvehent 11y ago

I use taskwarrior with bugwarrior [1] to automatically maintain a list of pending bugs/issues and pull requests assigned to me. The initial setup takes a couple hours, but it's a great way to track stuff spread across dozens of locations. [1] http://bugwarrior.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ http://bugwarrior.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

julian_t 11y ago

I've started using TW and find it great for the simple to-do list stuff I need, with enough control over dependencies and scheduling. I've tried org mode, but I just don't get on with the emacs way of working. TW, as a simple command line tool, integrates well with scripts and other apps, and a Ubersicht plugin displays the task list on my OS X desktop. One thing that does drive me nuts, though, is its habit of changing task IDs. I know why it works like that, but it makes it harder to work with.

tomlong 11y ago

I've written about 5 programs about 30% as functional as this... I can't believe I didn't know about it. Been using google keep for a while, but going to try and live with this for a bit.

ytjohn 11y ago

I use this pretty extensively for work. I don't really need to keep a todo list for home things, or if I do, pen and paper is the most ideal. At work, we use Jira for task management. My philosophy is that taskwarrior is what I use to track things. Jira is what I use so that my team members and management can track things. So when a bit of work comes my way, whether via slack, email, or other methods, I add that to taskwarrior. I then use the tool bugwarrior to pull down my jira tasks (every 15 minutes or on demand). If I end up entering a TW task in Jira, I mark the TW version done. I can use TW itself to set task priority, assign tags, or move into "projects" according to my view of the work needing accomplished. I did look into using the TW hooks and a python jira library to manipulate jira tasks using the task command. It was technically doable, but I feel I'd always be fiddling with the logical side (each jira project has different workflows for moving a task through statuses, some requiring acceptance criteria at the end). Instead, I either use jira-cli, or just edit the task in jira.

satysin 11y ago

A little off-topic but this [1] screenshot from their homepage really shows how things are today with OS X running Windows 10 in a VM which is in turn running Bash on Ubuntu on Windows. Haha [1] https://taskwarrior.org/news/images/win10.png https://taskwarrior.org/news/images/win10.png

ywecur 11y ago
It's nice that they actually went through the effort to show that it works well on GNU/Windows!