I would like to have a master pipeline capable of running the pipelines of our system's individual components. I'd also like to be able to run any of those components' pipelines individually. Additionally, some of the component pipelines are configured using yaml, while others are using the classic approach. (I'm not sure if that figures into any possible solutions to this problem.) Those that are configured using yaml typically contain multiple jobs, and I'd need all of the jobs to run in those cases.
Using approach #2 recommended here, I tried the following:
jobs:
- job: build_and_deploy
displayName: Build and Deploy
cancelTimeoutInMinutes: 1
pool:
name: some-pool
steps:
- checkout: self
- template: component_one_pipeline.yml
- template: component_two_pipeline.yml
I receive an error for the following "unexpected values": trigger, resources, name, variables, and jobs. I'm guessing these aren't allowed in any yaml file referenced in the template step of another pipeline yaml file. As I mentioned above, though, I need these values in their files because we need to run the pipelines individually.
If possible, could someone point me in the direction of how to get this done?
EDIT: I have also tried the approach given here. I was thinking I'd have a master pipeline that essentially did nothing except serve as a trigger for all of the child pipelines that are supposed to run sequentially. Essentially, the child pipelines should subscribe to the master pipeline and run when it's done. I ended up with the following 2 files:
# master-pipeline.yml
trigger: none
pool:
name: some agent pool
steps:
- script: echo Running MASTER PIPELINE
displayName: 'Run master pipeline'
#child-pipeline.yml
trigger: none
#- testing-branch (tried these combinations trying to pick up master run)
#- main
pool:
name: some agent pool
resources:
pipelines:
- pipeline: testing_master_pipeline
source: TestingMasterPipeline
trigger: true
steps:
- script: echo Running CHILD PIPELINE 1
displayName: 'Run Child Pipeline 1'
Unfortunately, it's not working. I don't get any exceptions, but the child pipeline isn't running when I manually run the master pipeline. Any thoughts?
Thanks in advance.
The way that those approaches you linked work, and Azure DevOps build triggering works in general, is that a build completion can trigger another build, and you have to have the trigger in build to be triggered. So:
Yaml templates can't have things like triggers, so they won't really help you here (though you can of course split any of the individual pipelines to templates). Triggers are in the main yaml pipeline fail, which references the template-files. So you can't have a individual component pipelines as templates.
Yaml pipelines can be chained with the resources-declaration mentioned in the first link. The way this works is that the resource declaration is in the pipeline to be triggered, and you configure the conditions (like branch filters: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/process/pipeline-triggers?view=azure-devops#branch-filters) to the pipeline to be triggered. For example, in your component pipeline you declare the master pipeline as resource, and set the conditions when the component pipeline will be triggered, like when the master pipeline is run against /release/* -branch. Or just set the trigger to true in order to trigger the component pipeline from any succesful run of the master pipeline. The component pipeline can still have its own pipeline triggers at the start of the pipeline declaration.
The classic build definitions can also be chained via edit build definition -> triggers -> build completion (see, for example, here: https://jpearson.blog/2019/03/27/chaining-builds-in-azure-devops/). This works the same way as with yaml pipelines; you configure the conditions for this the classic pipeline to trigger, so add the master pipeline as trigger to the component pipelines. Again, you can also set pipeline triggers for the component pipeline.
The limitation here is, that a classic pipeline can be triggered by an yaml pipeline, but not vice versa. A similar limitation in the yaml resources-declaration; they can't be triggered by a classic pipeline. If you need such triggering, or otherwise find the "native" triggers not to be enough, you can of course shoot an Azure DevOps API call in either type of pipeline to trigger any pipeline. See: https://blog.geralexgr.com/cloud/trigger-azure-devops-build-pipelines-using-rest-api, or just search for the azure devops rest api and associated blog posts that trigger the api with powershell, the rest api -task or by some other means.
As it turns out, I needed to set the pipelines' default branch to the one I was testing on for things to work correctly. The code in my original post works fine.
If you run into this problem and you're using a testing branch to test your pipelines, check out the information here on how to configure your pipeline to listen for triggers on your branch. Apparently a pipeline only listens for them on its default branch. Note: The example in the link uses the "classic" approach to pipeline configuration as an example, but you can reach the same page from a yaml configuration's edit screen by clicking the 3 dots on the right and selecting "Triggers."
Hope this helps someone.
Related
I have defined a multi job azure pipeline where every job needs to clone and checkout the source git repository. Some of these jobs can take a while so I am wondering if every job always clones and checks out the momentary HEAD version/commit of the Git branch or the pipeline trigger commit is remembered by the pipeline and then used for every job in order to have a consistent pipeline run.
I am pretty sure resp. can only hope the 2nd to be the case (and never saw anything else) but I am wondering if someone can point me to some Azure docs that officially confirm it.
When a pipeline is queued the ref is set. All jobs in the pipeline will checkout that reference. It's one of the reasons why the agent checks out the ref specifically and leaves the repo in detached HEAD state.
I can't find a doc that explicitly explains this, but that's how it works.
In a build pipeline (both YAML and Classic), by default each job in the pipeline will check out the commit version which triggered the current pipeline run.
In YAML pipeline, if you do not want a job to check out the commit ref, you can add the following step as the first one in the job.
steps:
- checkout: none
. . .
Both #Jesse and #Bright are right
There's a pipeline decorator that is evaluated on the first stage that looks for the presence of the checkout task. If the task is not found, it is dynamically inserted as the first step in the job.
You can see the pipeline decorator if you look at the top-level logs of the stage and expand the Job preparation parameters:
By specifying the checkout task with different settings, you can prevent this task from being injected:
steps:
- checkout: none
I am trying to solve a problem where I can't find the right documentation for the problem that I have.
At the moment, in my project, I am using Azure DevOps pipelines to build and deploy a simples code in a function. What I am trying to approach is to have multiple stages doing something concrete.
Example of the pipeline
Stage 1 - Validation of code (checktsyle, guidelines,...)
Stage 2 - Tests
Job1 : Unit tests
Job2 : Integration tests
Stage 3 - Deployment on the cloud
Stage 4 - Function tests against the deployment done on stage 3.
Problem
As you may know, when you do different stages, the pipelines run into different slaves, which means that will apply the git checkout in all of them. What I am trying to make is to avoid this checkouts and only make one single checkout on the first stage and use the checkout of the first stage for the rest (the code is the same..)
Do you have any clue what I am missing here? I know that I can do this process in a single stage with all steps/jobs inside but I want to split this in different stages to make sure that each stage has it own responsability.
Thanks in advance for your time.
It depends on where your agents run, if the agents are self-hosted, you can of course use a common location and avoid checking out the self repo. With hosted agents, I don't think you can do this using the stage concept in azure pipelines, stages have specific semantics which do not map to your desired outcome AFAIK. There are other ways to split the responsibilities without insisting on using azure pipeline stages. It depends on what you want to achieve with this splitting of responsibilities;
If you simply want to logically partition the pipeline there are alternatives e.g. templates which will allow you to separate the partitions into files which can be maintained separately, if that would satisfy your requirement for separation of responsibilities. They can even be separated into different repositories like in the example below, of course they can also reside in the same repository.
An example I use for caching and restoring dependencies for C++ projects using a common repository.
- checkout: DevOpsScripts
- template: up-restore.yml#DevOpsScripts
parameters:
CachePath: $(updepsCache)
CacheKeyPrefix: 'updeps | "$(Agent.OS)"'
DependenciesManifest: $(updepsPrefix)$(osSuffix).json
As stated in order to accomplish that you should have a custom agent on which you can have a folder to store the code for example C:\code. Then you can checkout the repository on this code path and disable checkout on the next stages.
You can disable checkout on the job inside your stage.
- job: DeployCode
displayName: Deploy code
steps:
- checkout: none
- script: echo deploying code
displayName: deploy code
In order to checkout on a specific directory on your self hosted agent you should:
- checkout: self
clean: true
path: C:\code
I have two repos on my Azure DevOps project. One for the Cloud Infrastructure deployment and another that contains my application code.
I have a YAML pipeline that is triggered after any of those repos build pipeline finishes. The pipeline looks a bit like this like this:
resources:
pipelines:
- pipeline: MyProject-Code
- pipeline: MyProject-Infrastructure
jobs:
- job: DeployInfrastructure
steps:
# Here are the tasks the deploy the project infrastructure
- job: DeployCode
steps:
# Here are the tasks that deploy the code
I would like to put a condition on the DeployInfrastructure job so it is only executed if the triggering pipeline is the infrastructure one as I do not need to redeploy it if the change only affects the application code.
However, when reading the documentation from Microsoft there does not seem to be a very straightforward way of doing this.
Have a look at Pipeline resource variables
In each run, the metadata for a pipeline resource is available to all
jobs in the form of predefined variables. The is the
identifier that you gave for your pipeline resource. Pipeline
resources variables are only available at runtime.
There are also a number of predefined variables called Build.TriggeredBy.*, amongst them Build.TriggeredBy.DefinitionName, however documentation suggests that for yaml pipeline with pipeline triggers the resource variables should be used instead
If the build was triggered by another build, then this variable is set
to the name of the triggering build pipeline. In Classic pipelines,
this variable is triggered by a build completion trigger.
This variable is agent-scoped, and can be used as an environment
variable in a script and as a parameter in a build task, but not as
part of the build number or as a version control tag.
If you are triggering a YAML pipeline using resources, you should use
the resources variables instead.
In template pipelines you can't place any trigger statement such as trigger: none as specified in Microsoft's docs to disable ci trigger, so I wonder how do you prevent these pipelines from being executed every time you update them or any other yaml file in the same branch?
The pipeline yaml definition now supports disabling all trigers with
trigger: none
Reference
So in the end in a template pipeline you can't state something like trigger: none (to set only manual triggering) and you cannot specify stages or jobs, only steps are allowed (so you can't define any condition to prevent pipeline execution on the job or on the stage).
You have an option to disable the CI trigger by going in the triggers section for the template pipeline and select the following:
I don't like much this option because it means having pipeline configuration that is not captured in the yaml pipeline definition but I found no other way to disable the template pipeline from being triggered every time something (including the pipeline itself) is updated in its branch.
Other answers are fine.
Here is another approach I found. I have a yaml based build pipeline. I did not want to touch the yaml just for disabling the trigger. So I disabled the pipeline as follows.
Pick your pipeline and double click to edit it.
Go to the settings.
Now you should see an option to disable. Note here we are disabling the pipeline, not just disabling trigger to the pipeline.
First you need to go to your Pipelines dashboard, then select the pipeline that you want to disable CI for it
then Click on Edit
You will be redirected to the pipeline yaml file, from there you will click on the vertical ellipsis ⋮ => Triggers
and here you go, you can disable CI for your pipeline that easily
Save it, and you are done.
If you want to update your template without affecting pipelines which uses this template make a change on separate branch and merge it to master (or whatever you use) once you are sure that you have what you want.
The same applies if you use template from different repo:
# Repo: Contoso/WindowsProduct
# File: azure-pipelines.yml
resources:
repositories:
- repository: templates
type: github
name: Contoso/BuildTemplates
ref: refs/tags/v1.0 # optional ref to pin to
jobs:
- template: common.yml#templates # Template reference
parameters:
vmImage: 'vs2017-win2016'
By default you use template from your main branch, but you can point to any branch you want. Thus you can also test that your changes on limited pipelines as you need to point directly to a branch where you modified your template.
Let's say you have that branching:
master
|_ feature/add-extra-step
And you make a change in template but on feature/add-extra-step by adding additional step.
Now hen you trigger pipeline which uses that template:
trigger goes from master - your additional step in template won't be run
trigger goes from feature/add-extra-step - your additional step will be run
I made a change in template on feature/extra-step branch:
And this is change is not avialable when I run pipeline (even the same pipeline) on master:
If you for instance don't want to trigger ci build making changes on template, pleace commit those changes with phrase [skip ci] in th git message. Check here for more details.
I'm having a hard time getting a grasp on this to be honest.
Right now my lab project is as follows:
PR to master -> Triggers Pre-Build Pipeline as condition to merge the code ->
On merge Infrastructure pipe runs only if any changes happen in my Infrastructure folder ->
On merge I want to run my deploy pipeline to deploy my web app to Azure.
The pipes in question do the things they ought to, i.e.
Pre build builds, publishes artifact, runs Unit tests, validates ARM templates.
Infra pipe deploys the necessary infra for my web app such as ResourceGroup, App plan, app service, key vault.
Deploy Pipe downloads the artifact produced in pre deploy and deploys to a stage slot and swaps it to production slot.
What I can't seem to get to work is the pipeline chaining through dependencies, if changes happen to both infra and web app code in master I want the infra pipe to run first and the deploy pipe only if it succeeds.
If I merge only app code I want only the deploy pipe to run regardless if the infra pipe ran or not.
If I merge only infra code I want only the infra pipe to run.
If I merge both app and infra code I want both infra and deploy pipe to run in specific order.
I feel this shouldn't be all that hard to accomplish, but I've spent way too much time trying to solve this to no avail, anyone able to help? :)
Edit:
Hey Sorry #HughLin-MSFT Been Trying to work around this a bit since we're trying to avoid running scripts left and right. :)
I saw you have Build Queuing planned in an upcoming release so for now I think we might have to wait for that.
If I were to merge my deploy and infra pipe, can I use:
trigger:
branches:
include:
- master
paths:
include:
- Infrastructure/*
At stage level and somehow skip a stage instead?
Seen multiple articles mention "Continue if skipped" but can't find any information on how to actually skip a stage.
For the first and second cases, you just need to set Path filters in Triggers, the pipeline only triggers when the file at the specified path is changed. Please refer to this.
For the third case, you can try to add two agent jobs in the infra pipe, add Trigger Azure DevOps Pipeline task to the second agent job to trigger the deploy pipe, and then set Only when all previous jobs have succeeded in Run this job drop-down box for job2. In addition, you need to add a powershell task before the Trigger Azure DevOps Pipeline task, and use a script to detect whether there is app code, run job2 if there is, and cancel job2 if not.
Update:
First you can create a new pipeline and create a variable:changedcode
Use Builds - Get rest api to get the commit , then get the changed code folder with Commits - Get Changes rest api.
Assign changed code folder name as value to changedcode variable.
Set custom conditions for the agent job. In the Infra job, if the changedcode variable value is Infra, run the Infra job. In the Infra job, use the Builds-Queue rest api or Trigger Azure DevOps Pipeline task to trigger the Infra pipeline. The same is true for Deploy job, the only difference is the custom condition expression.
Here is a sample structure in yaml:
jobs:
variables:
changedcode: ""
- job:
steps:
- powershell： |
#Get the changed code folder with rest api
- job: Infra
condition: containsValue($(changedcode), "Infra"))
- powershell： |
#queue Infra pipeline with rest api or Trigger Azure DevOps Pipeline task
- job: Deploy
condition: (containsValue($(changedcode), "deploy")),and ....
- powershell： |
#queue Deploy pipeline with rest api or Trigger Azure DevOps Pipeline task