Tasks

Task declaration and configuration

Tasks can be declared and configured in three locations in the build configuration:

• The global top-level build configuration tasks: list.
• A build lifecycle tasks: list.
• A stage tasks: list.

Tasks declared and configured in the top-level tasks list are global to the build process and can be reused in multiple lifecycle and stage tasks lists. This is done by referencing the declared task's name in the task list:

# global task declaration and configuration block
tasks:
  - task: Start
    variables:
      # Override the default time format
      - name: timeFormat 
        value: "yyyyMMddThh:mm:ss:Z"

# executable build lifecycles
lifecycles:
  # build all programs of the application
  - lifecycle: full
    tasks:
      - Start # reuse the global Start task configuration
      - task: Finish # declare a new local Finish task configuration
        variables:
          # Override the default log code page
          - name: logEncoding
            value: utf-8

See the YAML schema tasks reference for syntax details.

Task configuration types

The zBuilder supports three types of task configurations:

• Basic task – Basic tasks are generally simple tasks used to perform different types of initialization, analysis, and finalization steps during the build process.
• Language task - Language tasks are special tasks used to build a list of source files for a specific language like Cobol, PL/I, Assembler.
• Stage – Stages allow for the creation of named collections of declared and configured tasks for reuse by one or more build lifecycles.