DependsOn project target does not work as expected

[OSRSBlue]

Current Behavior

Settings DependsOn to a specific project target for my "build:auth-client" does not execute the builds:docs target for my authentication-api project.

{
  "name": "openapi-generator",
  "$schema": "../../node_modules/nx/schemas/project-schema.json",
  "sourceRoot": "libs/openapi-generator/src",
  "projectType": "library",
  "targets": {
    "build:auth-client": {
      "executor": "nx:run-commands",
      "options": {
          "command": "openapi-generator-cli generate -i ./apps/authentication-api/docs/swagger.yaml -g typescript-axios -o generated-sources/openapi"
        },
      "dependsOn": ["^authentication-api:build:docs"]
    }
  },
  "implicitDependencies": ["authentication-api"],
  "tags": []
}

Expected Behavior

When setting DependsOn to be "authentication-api:build:docs" I would expect it to execute the target build:docs for the package authentication-api. The format above I was using for depends on is "{PROJECTNAME}:{TARGET}".

For example, if I have my implicitDependencies including my app "authentication-api" I would expect to able to set the depends on project as "authentication-api" and the target "build:docs" explicitly.

GitHub Repo

No response

Steps to Reproduce

1. Run the command "nx build:auth-client openapi-generator" to execute build task for generating client.
2. Task will fail because "DependsOn" does not execute the build:docs target for the specified authentication-api project, which results in a failure.

Nx Report

Node : 18.4.0
   OS   : darwin arm64
   yarn : 1.22.19
   
   nx : 15.0.3
   @nrwl/angular : Not Found
   @nrwl/cypress : 15.0.3
   @nrwl/detox : Not Found
   @nrwl/devkit : 15.0.3
   @nrwl/esbuild : Not Found
   @nrwl/eslint-plugin-nx : 15.0.3
   @nrwl/expo : Not Found
   @nrwl/express : Not Found
   @nrwl/jest : 15.0.3
   @nrwl/js : 15.0.3
   @nrwl/linter : 15.0.3
   @nrwl/nest : Not Found
   @nrwl/next : Not Found
   @nrwl/node : Not Found
   @nrwl/nx-cloud : 15.3.4
   @nrwl/nx-plugin : Not Found
   @nrwl/react : 15.0.3
   @nrwl/react-native : Not Found
   @nrwl/rollup : 15.0.3
   @nrwl/schematics : Not Found
   @nrwl/storybook : 15.0.3
   @nrwl/web : 15.0.3
   @nrwl/webpack : 15.0.3
   @nrwl/workspace : 15.0.3
   typescript : 4.8.4
   ---------------------------------------
   Local workspace plugins:
   ---------------------------------------
   Community plugins:
         @nx-go/nx-go: 2.7.0

Failure Logs

[error] The spec file is not found: ./apps/authentication-api/docs/swagger.yaml
[error] Check the path of the OpenAPI spec and try again.

 >  NX   ERROR: Something went wrong in run-commands - Command failed: openapi-generator-cli generate -i ./apps/authentication-api/docs/swagger.yaml -g typescript-axios -o generated-sources/openapi

   Pass --verbose to see the stacktrace.

Additional Information

The issue seems to be that DependsOn does not support specifying a specific project and target as a depends on. I may be using the wrong syntax, but I am trying to execute specific project targets when generating my service clients. I have multiple build X Client targets that are formatted as "build:x-client", which each depend on a single projects generated docs. I would like to have the granularity of depending on explicit project targets so that I do not need to build all of my docs for each API to generate one client that only depends on one API.

For example, I have three targets doing the same thing for each API: build:x-client, build:y-client, and build:z-client. If I want to build just my x-client I would expect to be able to depend on x-api and execute build docs instead of being required to build all of the docs for all my dependencies.

{
  "name": "openapi-generator",
  "$schema": "../../node_modules/nx/schemas/project-schema.json",
  "sourceRoot": "libs/openapi-generator/src",
  "projectType": "library",
  "targets": {
    "build:x-client": {
      "executor": "nx:run-commands",
      "options": {
          "command": "openapi-generator-cli generate -i ./apps/authentication-api/docs/swagger.yaml -g typescript-axios -o generated-sources/openapi"
        },
      "dependsOn": ["^x-api:build:docs"]
    },

    "build:y-client": {
      "executor": "nx:run-commands",
      "options": {
          "command": "openapi-generator-cli generate -i ./apps/authentication-api/docs/swagger.yaml -g typescript-axios -o generated-sources/openapi"
        },
      "dependsOn": ["^y-api:build:docs"]
    },

    "build:z-client": {
      "executor": "nx:run-commands",
      "options": {
          "command": "openapi-generator-cli generate -i ./apps/authentication-api/docs/swagger.yaml -g typescript-axios -o generated-sources/openapi"
        },
      "dependsOn": ["^z-api:build:docs"]
    }
  },
  "implicitDependencies": ["x-api", "y-api", "z-api"],
  "tags": []
}

[OSRSBlue]

I have two approaches for solving this:

1. Create a custom executor (More work, but preferred to keep my executor expressive)
   This would require me to create a executor and support an option for DependsOnApiClientDocs, which would take the project name and target command that I want to execute before generating the client.

2. Remove dependsOn and execute two commands sequentially
   This approach I would remove the DependsOn for each target and instead execute a command to build the docs before generating the client sequentially. I feel that this is a hacky work around and less expressive.

What do you all think would be a good approach if their is no support for specifying an explicit project and target with DependsOn?

[AgentEnder]

We are working on this: #16100

The support will only work with the expanded object notation for dependsOn, but should do what you expect.

[OSRSBlue]

@AgentEnder Awesome! For the time being I built a simple executor that uses the same object notation to build a specific project target.

[github-actions]

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