Why does Taskwarrior delete start dates when a task is done? How to override or get duration of tasks?

Question

Yesterday I started retroactively adding tasks to Taskwarrior by giving all the information I needed to import from an external list:

$ task add proj:myproject The Task I Had Done in the Past start:2010-01-01 end:2010-01-31T23:59:59 status:completed

It didn't occur to me until I hit task all that completed tasks in Taskwarrior have their "start" date deleted:

$ task 870b8761

Name          Value
ID            -
Description   A Task Started and Ended through Normal Means
Status        Completed
Project       myproject
Entered       2020-03-29 21:39:20 (11mo)
End           2020-09-23 15:05:03
Last modified 2021-01-03 14:39:59 (8w)
Virtual tags  COMPLETED PROJECT TAGGED UDA UNBLOCKED
UUID          870b8761-0284-4753-8e96-5e2d4ea2d3cb
Urgency       3.641

    project      1 *    1 =      1
    tags       0.8 *    1 =    0.8
    age      0.921 *    2 =   1.84
                            ------
                             3.641

Date                Modification
2020-06-01 22:11:33 Start set to '2020-06-01 22:11:33'.
2020-09-23 15:05:03 Start deleted (duration: 113d 16:53:30).
                    End set to '2020-09-23 15:05:03'.
                    Status changed from 'pending' to 'completed'.

1. Has there been any explanation as to why the program needs to delete this information? I haven't been able to find it in the docs;
2. Is there a way to override this behaviour?
   • Alternatively, could one access the duration calculated when a task is marked as done? It is not an available option in task _columns, task uuid duration brings nothing when called and task _get id.duration says it is not a DOM reference.

Answer 1

You could use timewarrior to get the time spent on tasks. I described it in this answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/60168765/6105651.