--context flag to avoid changing global Taskwarrior context

[GTonehour]

I’d like to request a CLI option to set a Taskwarrior context for the current taskwarrior-tui process only, for example:

taskwarrior-tui --context c

Problem

Today, to open TUI in context c, I do:

task context c
taskwarrior-tui

But task context c changes Taskwarrior’s global context, which affects other terminals / already-open workflows. I often run multiple instances and want each one isolated.

Proposed behavior

Add a CLI flag (name could be --context or similar) that:

• applies context only to that taskwarrior-tui process
• does not persist or mutate global Taskwarrior context
• coexists with existing options like --taskrc / --taskdata

Current workaround

Using separate taskrc files with context=... and launching via --taskrc works, but is less convenient than a direct flag.

[kdheepak]

I don't like the global state changing too, but I think this is currently not possible?

taskwarrior-tui runs task context to change the context:

taskwarrior-tui/src/pane/context.rs

Line 109 in f578009

let output = Command::new(task_exe).arg("context").output()?;

and then doesn't use the task context any more to generate the list of tasks, it reads the global context for the filter string:

taskwarrior-tui/src/app.rs

Lines 441 to 464 in f578009

	pub fn get_context(&mut self) -> Result<()> {
	let output = std::process::Command::new(&self.task_exe).arg("_get").arg("rc.context").output()?;
	self.current_context = String::from_utf8_lossy(&output.stdout).to_string();
	self.current_context = self.current_context.strip_suffix('\n').unwrap_or("").to_string();
	// support new format for context
	let output = std::process::Command::new(&self.task_exe)
	.arg("_get")
	.arg(format!("rc.context.{}.read", self.current_context))
	.output()?;
	self.current_context_filter = String::from_utf8_lossy(&output.stdout).to_string();
	self.current_context_filter = self.current_context_filter.strip_suffix('\n').unwrap_or("").to_string();
	// If new format is not used, check if old format is used
	if self.current_context_filter.is_empty() {
	let output = std::process::Command::new(&self.task_exe)
	.arg("_get")
	.arg(format!("rc.context.{}", self.current_context))
	.output()?;
	self.current_context_filter = String::from_utf8_lossy(&output.stdout).to_string();
	self.current_context_filter = self.current_context_filter.strip_suffix('\n').unwrap_or("").to_string();
	}
	Ok(())
	}

I think currently the only way to do this is isolate each instance is to set TASKRC and TASKDATA environment variables (for example in envrc; and use direnv or manually source the file) per isolated instance. Correct me if I'm wrong about that.

[GTonehour]

You're right I'll override taskrc with something like

tmp_rc=$(mktemp) && echo -e "include ~/.taskrc\ncontext=c" > "$tmp_rc" && TASKRC="$tmp_rc" taskwarrior-tui; rm -f "$tmp_rc"

Taskwarrior supports inline configuration overrides, so running task rc.context=c list applies the context for that specific command only. I guess a way to handle this without mutating global state would be to have taskwarrior-tui pass rc.context=<name> as an argument to every internal task command it executes.

[kdheepak]

That's a good idea. I'll think about it. I'd like to move to using taskchampion in the future to avoid making subprocess calls though, and I don't know how the rc.context would work there. Let's leave this issue open for now, and revisit when the taskchampion change happens. Hope the hack works as workaround for now.