# Plugin rake task running multiple times - what are we missing?

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/plugin-rake-task-running-multiple-times-what-are-we-missing/210077>\
**Category:** Development\
**Created:** [November 24, 2021, 5:33pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/plugin-rake-task-running-multiple-times-what-are-we-missing/210077 "2021-11-24T17:33:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 5

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**Author:** ![manut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/manut/32/485119_2.png) [@manut](https://meta.discourse.org/u/manut)\
**Post date:** [February 24, 2025, 10:31am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/plugin-rake-task-running-multiple-times-what-are-we-missing/210077/5 "2025-02-24T10:31:38Z")

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I may be a bit late to the party 🙂

I’m hitting the same issue in a new plugin, and searched a bit. It seems this issue hits other plugins too (e.g.: the official chat plugin), but I found a working solution to avoid the tasks being registered multiple times:

```rb
# Clear any previous registration
task('import_json:preview').clear 

# Task definition
desc 'Previews changes which would be applied by import_json'
task 'import_json:preview', [:file_path] => :environment do |_task, args|
  puts "Hello world!"
end

```

Clearing _after_ the task description will prevent the task to be listed with `rake --tasks`, so it must be cleared before.

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