Modifying resolved tasks

[qTipTip]

Hey!

First of all, thanks for a great task-manager!

I have a question. Is it possible to edit already resolved tasks? I.e., for instance to add notes pertaining to the resolution of the task.

Running dstask show-resolved shows the list of resolved tasks, but I can't seem to find an ID I can reference in a call to dstask modify. Is this something I have just missed, or does this feature not exist?

Cheers in advance!

[naggie]

Hi!

First of all, thanks for a great task-manager!

You're welcome, I'm glad you like it!

Is it possible to edit already resolved tasks?

Not currently via cli, I've been meaning to allow manipulation of resolved tasks.

Resolved tasks no longer have a numeric ID, but still retain a UUID which remains the same throughout the lifetime of the task. I think the way I will do it is allow addressing of resolved task by their UUID, which would be listed in show-resolved.

I can make it such that you don't have to use the entire UUID, just enough to disambiguate. For instance, the resolved task with UUID 2cb8aa23-4d02-4ab8-8665-b154ed4a30ee could be edited with dstask edit 2cb8aa or something. dstask could ask for more characters if that matches more than one task. show-resolved could list the first 6 by default where possible.

Does this sound like a good solution?

[qTipTip]

Hi again!

UUID sounds very reasonable. This is what git uses as well, no?

What are the chances of two UUIDs matching?

[stianlagstad]

You'll have to be veeeeeeeery lucky for that to happen, @qTipTip !

For example, the number of random version-4 UUIDs which need to be generated in order to have a 50% probability of at least one collision is 2.71 quintillion .. This number is equivalent to generating 1 billion UUIDs per second for about 85 years.

ref https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_unique_identifier#Collisions

[naggie]

UUID sounds very reasonable. This is what git uses as well, no?

Git uses a merkel tree using sha1 hashing. dstask uses UUID4s already for a globally unique task ID. As @stianlagstad says, collisions are.... improbable :)

@stianlagstad -- thanks for posting an article on dstask, by the way. I enjoyed reading it.

[thatnerdjosh]

@naggie I can volunteer to update dstask to show uuid with the show-resolved command if this isn't already being worked on

EDIT: I figure a good reference point would be to look at how taskwarrior implements it, since they are very similar in nature

[ThreeFx]

Just as a note, truncated UUIDs have a way higher probability of colliding due to their structure. It has a random component in there, but some of them are deterministic, e.g. some parts come from the time the UUID was generated.

[naggie]

Actually that's a good point. Not sure it will affect us much in practice though, it may result in an an extra disambiguation step now and then which is fine.

@naggie I can volunteer to update dstask to show uuid with the show-resolved command if this isn't already being worked on

Thanks though @ard0gg is on the case with https://github.com/naggie/dstask/pull/37 . Please take a look and provide your thoughts if you have time.