Tasks, prepare and watch command ordering

[Adirelle]

Hello,

In one of an internal project of my company, I am trying to drop direnv and pdm in favor of mise and uv. The goal is to have something easy to use by my coworkers and that does not mess with globally installed stuff.

One of the things I have achieved with direnv but cannot replicate with mise is ensuring that dependencies are in sync before executing tasks. The .envrc file looks to something like that:

# Install mise tools and add them to PATH
watch_file mise.lock
mise install --locked
direnv_load mise exec -- direnv dump

# Create, populate and activate the virtual environment (uv is provided by mise)
watch_file uv.lock
uv sync --frozen
direnv_load uv run direnv dump

# Install ansible collections and roles (ansible-galaxy is provided by uv)
watch_file requirements.yml
ansible-galaxy install -f requirements.yml

# Install the pre-commit hooks (pre-commit is provided by uv)
watch_file .pre-commit.config.yaml
pre-commit install --install-hooks

With the watch_file directives, this scripts is automatically executed each time:

• the user enters the directory,
• one of the watched file change, which can happen when switching from one git branch to another.

I have tried to replicate this with mise and custom prepare steps but it seems they are executed in parallel without ordering. As my prepare steps have dependencies and must be run in order, this fails. I also tried with watches and hooks but the issue remain.

Any idea on how I could handle this with mise?

If we were to slightly change the way hook and prepare works, I would suggest to either :

• have the hook and prepare sections accept the same parameters as tasks (e.g. make them some kind of specialized tasks),
• allow the hook and prepare sections to initiate tasks using something like run.task in a first phase and then let the task engine figure the order of execution.

[Adirelle]

Note that in the second case, I would have something like that in mise:

[tools]
uv = "latest"

[settings]
experimental = true

[env._.python]
venv = { path = ".venv", create = true }
uv_venv_auto = "create|source"

[tasks.uv-deps]
run = "uv sync --frozen"

[tasks.ansible-galaxy]
depends = ["uv-deps"]
run = "ansible-galaxy install -f requirements.yml"

[tasks.install-pre-commit]
depends = ["uv-deps"]
run = "pre-commit install --install-hooks"

[tasks.install]
run.tasks = ["ansible-galaxy", "install-pre-commit"]

[hooks]
enter.task = "install"

[[watch_files]]
pattern = "uv.lock"
run.task = "uv-deps"

[[watch_files]]
pattern = "requirements.yml"
run.task = "ansible-galaxy"

[[watch_files]]
pattern = ".pre-commit.config.yaml"
run.task = "install-pre-commit"

[jdx]

Two PRs have been opened to address this:

1. feat(hooks): add task references to hooks and watch_files #8400 — Adds task references to hooks and watch_files, so you can write enter = { task = "setup" } or [[watch_files]] with task = "sync-deps" instead of inline scripts. This lets hooks trigger full mise tasks (with their own dependency ordering, environment, etc.).

2. feat(prepare): add dependency ordering to prepare steps #8401 — Adds a depends field to prepare providers, so you can declare ordering between prepare steps:

[prepare.uv]
auto = true

[prepare.ansible-galaxy]
auto = true
depends = ["uv"]
run = "ansible-galaxy install -f requirements.yml"
sources = ["requirements.yml"]
outputs = [".galaxy-installed"]

With these two changes, your direnv workflow should be replicable — prepare steps run in dependency order before task execution, and hooks can trigger tasks on enter or when watched files change.

This comment was generated by Claude Code.

[Adirelle]

Thank you for the quick answer. I will let you know how it works once I can get a hand on the 2026.3 release.