Invoke-psake already has options (-docs, -detailedDocs) to display the list of Task defined in a psake script. Unfortunately, these options return formatted strings:

if ($showDetailed) {
    $docs | sort 'Name' | format-list -property Name,Alias,Description,"Depends On",Default
} else {
    $docs | sort 'Name' | format-table -autoSize -wrap -property Name,Alias,"Depends On",Default,Description
}

Since the information on the tasks is already formatted as a list/table, the script that invokes -docs or -detailedDocs can't do anything else than print this information to the console.

In order to be able to be to do something with this data from the outside, there should be an option to return the objects themselves (ex: -structuredDocs). For example, we could do:

if ($showDetailed) {
    $docs | sort 'Name' | format-list -property Name,Alias,Description,"Depends On",Default
} elseif ($showSummary) {
    $docs | sort 'Name' | format-table -autoSize -wrap -property Name,Alias,"Depends On",Default,Description
} else {
    $docs
}

I am looking to have this feature because I want to be able to print a tree of the task dependencies in my build script. This will make it easier for my users to know which targets are available AND how they relate to each other... with minimal mental effort ;)

What do you think about this feature? From my opinion, it only opens up the door for people to do fun stuff with this metadata.