creating recurrence templates with due dates in the past allowed

[Craskermasker]

To report a bug...

• What command(s) did you run?

task add name due:2020-08-30 recurs:weekly

as a typo instead of:

task add name due:2022-08-30 recurs:weekly

• What did you expect to happen?

Creation of a recurrence template going forward with one task appearing

• What actually happened?

A large number (>400) of tasks at weekly intervals from the past to present appeared. Thankfully this was easy to delete by deleting one task and selecting yes for "delete all pending recurrences".

To request a feature...

• Clearly describe the feature.

Produce a warning or a prompt on creating a recurrence template with due date in the past, or that would generate a large number of tasks.

• Clearly state the use case. We are only interested in use cases, do not waste time with implementation details or suggested syntax.

Prevent a clumsy user from accidentally borking their taskwarrrior :D

[scottkosty]

+1, I sent an email to the user list with a similar request (it didn't receive a response). If it is not by default, it would be nice to at least have a hook or a setting we can set. My request was just for a simple task, not a recurrence template. I'll paste it here for reference:

I just added a task as follows:

  task add due:2021-01-09 some task

How can I have this give an error and not generate the task?

Is there a taskrc setting I can use? I haven't needed to look into
hooks. If I need to create a hook, I'm guessing an "on-add" hook is the
appropriate one? Any existing hook that does something similar that I
can tweak and use?

[djmitche]

@carmiac has proposed a major revision to recurrence support in https://github.com/carmiac/taskchampion/blob/798cec2b40f13c420ef6358e4d99b251e58249de/docs/src/iterative-tasks.md. If you're following this issue, please have a look and comment in GothenburgBitFactory/taskchampion#729.