--- /dev/null
+Title: Task management
+Slug: task-management
+Date: 2024-01-17 13:28:19 +00:00
+Category: columbiform
+Tags: columbiform, planet-debian, planet-ubuntu
+
+Now that I'm [freelancing]({filename}/going-freelance.md), I need to
+actually track my time, which is something I've had the luxury of not having
+to do before. That meant something of a rethink of the way I've been
+keeping track of my to-do list. Up to now that was a combination of things
+like the bug lists for the projects I'm working on at the moment, whatever
+task tracking system Canonical was using at the moment (Jira when I left),
+and a giant flat text file in which I recorded logbook-style notes of what
+I'd done each day plus a few extra notes at the bottom to remind myself of
+particularly urgent tasks. I _could_ have started manually adding times to
+each logbook entry, but ugh, let's not.
+
+In general, I had the following goals (which were a bit reminiscent of my
+[address book]({filename}/new-address-book.md)):
+
+ * free software throughout
+ * storage under my control
+ * ability to annotate tasks with URLs (especially bugs and merge requests)
+ * lightweight time tracking (I'm OK with having to explicitly tell it when
+ I start and stop tasks)
+ * ability to drive everything from the command line
+ * decent filtering so I don't have to look at my entire to-do list all the
+ time
+ * ability to easily generate billing information for multiple clients
+ * optionally, integration with Android (mainly so I can tick off personal
+ tasks like "change bedroom lightbulb" or whatever that don't involve
+ being near a computer)
+
+I didn't do an elaborate evaluation of multiple options, because I'm not
+trying to come up with the best possible solution for a client here. Also,
+there are a bazillion to-do list trackers out there and if I tried to
+evaluate them all I'd never do anything else. I just wanted something that
+works well enough for me.
+
+Since it [came up on
+Mastodon](https://fosstodon.org/@dondelelcaro/111682622624262162): a bunch
+of people swear by [Org mode](https://orgmode.org/), which I know can do at
+least some of this sort of thing. However, I don't use Emacs and don't plan
+to use Emacs. [nvim-orgmode](https://github.com/nvim-orgmode/orgmode) does
+have some support for time tracking, but when I've tried `vim`-based
+versions of Org mode in the past I've found they haven't really fitted my
+brain very well.
+
+## Taskwarrior and Timewarrior
+
+One of the other Freexian collaborators mentioned
+[Taskwarrior](https://taskwarrior.org/) and
+[Timewarrior](https://timewarrior.net/), so I had a look at those.
+
+The basic idea of Taskwarrior is that you have a `task` command that tracks
+each task as a blob of JSON and provides subcommands to let you add, modify,
+and remove tasks with a minimum of friction. `task add` adds a task, and
+you can add metadata like `project:Personal` (I always make sure every task
+has a project, for ease of filtering). Just running `task` shows you a task
+list sorted by Taskwarrior's idea of urgency, with an ID for each task, and
+there are various other reports with different filtering and verbosity.
+`task <id> annotate` lets you attach more information to a task. `task <id>
+done` marks it as done. So far so good, so a redacted version of my to-do
+list looks like this:
+
+ $ task ls
+
+ ID A Project Tags Description
+ 17 Freexian Add Incus support to autopkgtest [2]
+ 7 Columbiform Figure out Lloyds online banking [1]
+ 2 Debian Fix troffcvt for groff 1.23.0 [1]
+ 11 Personal Replace living room curtain rail
+
+Once I got comfortable with it, this was already a big improvement. I
+haven't bothered to learn all the filtering gadgets yet, but it was easy
+enough to see that I could do something like `task all project:Personal` and
+it'd show me both pending and completed tasks in that project, and that all
+the data was stored in `~/.task` - though I have to say that there are
+enough reporting bells and whistles that I haven't needed to poke around
+manually. In combination with the regular backups that I do anyway (you do
+too, right?), this gave me enough confidence to abandon my previous
+text-file logbook approach.
+
+Next was time tracking. Timewarrior integrates with Taskwarrior, albeit in
+[an only semi-packaged way](https://timewarrior.net/docs/taskwarrior/), and
+it was easy enough to set that up. Now I can do:
+
+ $ task 25 start
+ Starting task 00a9516f 'Write blog post about task tracking'.
+ Started 1 task.
+ Note: '"Write blog post about task tracking"' is a new tag.
+ Tracking Columbiform "Write blog post about task tracking"
+ Started 2024-01-10T11:28:38
+ Current 38
+ Total 0:00:00
+ You have more urgent tasks.
+ Project 'Columbiform' is 25% complete (3 of 4 tasks remaining).
+
+When I stop work on something, I do `task active` to find the ID, then `task
+<id> stop`. Timewarrior does the tedious stopwatch business for me, and I
+can manually enter times if I forget to start/stop a task. Then the really
+useful bit: I can do something like `timew summary :month <name-of-client>`
+and it tells me how much to bill that client for this month. Perfect.
+
+I also started using [VIT](https://github.com/vit-project/vit) to simplify
+the day-to-day flow a little, which means I'm normally just using one or two
+keystrokes rather than typing longer commands. That isn't really necessary
+from my point of view, but it does save some time.
+
+## Android integration
+
+I left Android integration for a bit later since it wasn't essential. When
+I got round to it, I have to say that it felt a bit clumsy, but it did
+eventually work.
+
+The first step was to [set up a
+taskserver](https://gothenburgbitfactory.github.io/taskserver-setup/). Most
+of the setup procedure was OK, but I wanted to use Let's Encrypt to minimize
+the amount of messing around with CAs I had to do. Getting this to work
+involved hitting things with sticks a bit, and there's still a local CA
+involved for client certificates. What I ended up with was a `certbot`
+setup with the `webroot` authenticator and a custom deploy hook as follows
+(with `cert_name` replaced by a DNS name in my house domain):
+
+ :::sh
+ #! /bin/sh
+ set -eu
+
+ cert_name=taskd.example.org
+
+ found=false
+ for domain in $RENEWED_DOMAINS; do
+ case "$domain" in
+ $cert_name)
+ found=:
+ ;;
+ esac
+ done
+ $found || exit 0
+
+ install -m 644 "/etc/letsencrypt/live/$cert_name/fullchain.pem" \
+ /var/lib/taskd/pki/fullchain.pem
+ install -m 640 -g Debian-taskd "/etc/letsencrypt/live/$cert_name/privkey.pem" \
+ /var/lib/taskd/pki/privkey.pem
+
+ systemctl restart taskd.service
+
+I could then set this in `/etc/taskd/config` (`server.crl.pem` and
+`ca.cert.pem` were generated using the documented taskserver setup
+procedure):
+
+ server.key=/var/lib/taskd/pki/privkey.pem
+ server.cert=/var/lib/taskd/pki/fullchain.pem
+ server.crl=/var/lib/taskd/pki/server.crl.pem
+ ca.cert=/var/lib/taskd/pki/ca.cert.pem
+
+Then I could set `taskd.ca` on my laptop to
+`/usr/share/ca-certificates/mozilla/ISRG_Root_X1.crt` and otherwise follow
+the client setup instructions, run `task sync init` to get things started,
+and then `task sync` every so often to sync changes between my laptop and
+the taskserver.
+
+I used [TaskWarrior
+Mobile](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ccextractor.taskwarriorflutter)
+as the client. I have to say I wouldn't want to use that client as my
+primary task tracking interface: the setup procedure is clunky even beyond
+the necessity of copying a client certificate around, it expects you to give
+it a `.taskrc` rather than having a proper settings interface for that, and
+it only seems to let you add a task if you specify a due date for it. It
+also lacks Timewarrior integration, so I can only really use it when I don't
+care about time tracking, e.g. personal tasks. But that's really all I
+need, so it meets my minimum requirements.
+
+## Next?
+
+Considering this is literally the first thing I tried, I have to say I'm
+pretty happy with it. There are a bunch of optional extras I haven't tried
+yet, but in general it kind of has the `vim` nature for me: if I need
+something it's very likely to exist or easy enough to build, but the
+features I don't use don't get in my way.
+
+I wouldn't recommend any of this to somebody who didn't already spend most
+of their time in a terminal - but I do. I'm glad people have gone to all
+the effort to build this so I didn't have to.
~cjwatson / blog.git / commitdiff