Inferred Tasks

Nx identifies available tasks for your project from tooling configuration files, package.json scripts and the targets defined in project.json. All tasks from the angular-store project are defined in its project.json file, but the companion angular-store-e2e project has its tasks inferred from configuration files. To view the tasks that Nx has detected, look in the Nx Console, Project Details View or run:

nx show project angular-store-e2e

If you expand the e2e task, you can see that it was created by the @nx/cypress plugin by analyzing the apps/angular-store-e2e/cypress.config.ts file. Notice the outputs are defined as:

[
  "{workspaceRoot}/dist/cypress/apps/angular-store-e2e/videos",
  "{workspaceRoot}/dist/cypress/apps/angular-store-e2e/screenshots"
]

This value is being read from the videosFolder and screenshotsFolder defined by the nxE2EPreset in your apps/angular-store-e2e/cypress.config.ts file. Let’s change their value in your apps/angular-store-e2e/cypress.config.ts file:

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import { nxE2EPreset } from '@nx/cypress/plugins/cypress-preset';
import { defineConfig } from 'cypress';

export default defineConfig({
  e2e: {
    ...nxE2EPreset(__filename, {
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      cypressDir: 'src',
      webServerCommands: {
        default: 'npx nx run angular-store:serve',
        production: 'npx nx run angular-store:serve-static',
      },
      ciWebServerCommand: 'npx nx run angular-store:serve-static',
      ciBaseUrl: 'http://localhost:4200',
    }),
    baseUrl: 'http://localhost:4200',
    videosFolder: '../dist/cypress/apps/angular-store-e2e/videos-changed',
    screenshotsFolder:
      '../dist/cypress/apps/angular-store-e2e/screenshots-changed',
  },
});

Now if you close the project details view (Ctrl-C in the terminal) and open it again, the outputs for the e2e target will be:

[
  "{workspaceRoot}/apps/dist/cypress/apps/angular-store-e2e/videos-changed",
  "{workspaceRoot}/apps/dist/cypress/apps/angular-store-e2e/screenshots-changed"
]

This feature ensures that Nx will always cache the correct files.

You can also override the settings for inferred tasks by modifying the targetDefaults in nx.json or setting a value in your project.json file. Nx will merge the values from the inferred tasks with the values you define in targetDefaults and in your specific project’s configuration.