How to share Azure Devops pipeline between multiple repos? - azure-devops

Question

So, I have the following situation:
20 git repositories with a microservice in each
A repo with a template pipeline for the standard build process
Each of the 20 repos defines its own pipeline that uses this template with some parameters
On a PR build for any of the 20 repos, it will run its own pipeline as a build validation.
That's all working fine.
But now, I want to add an additional Optional Check to each of the 20 repos which would run a code analysis tool (eg. sonarqube) as part of the PR.
I don't want to add this to the main pipeline as I want it to appear in the PR as a separate optional check which can be skipped or toggled between optional/required.
The only way that I can find to achieve this is to add a CodeAnalysis.yml to each of the 20 repos and create 20 associated pipelines, which is an overhead I'd rather not deal with.
Is there a way that you can have a single pipeline that can be referenced as an optional check in all of these repos?
According to the docs, it should be possible for the shared pipeline to dynamically fetch the code from the right repo using something like this:
- checkout: git://ProjectName/$(Build.Repository.Name)#$(Build.SourceBranch)
But when I try this, the PR is unable to queue the pipeline (unhelpfully, it doesn't give a reason why).
Is there a solution to this?

Answer 1

You need to use Templates to design a shared template to run the code scanning. Essentially templates are reusable yaml files that you can pass parameters to to customise options.
For example, for your use case you could have the template for code scanning and add an existing job onto your pipelines to extend this template, pass any optional parameters you need (such as the repo to check out) and you can add in conditions to decide when to run the code scanning check

Answer 2

I know what you mean, this is not possible (at least not in the PR interface). Because when you press 'Queue' button in the PR build section, there won't even be a popup to select parameters, it will just choose the default value.
- checkout: git://ProjectName/$(Build.Repository.Name)#$(Build.SourceBranch)
This is also not possible, because runtime variables are not accepted here, they will be read directly as string types.
One suggestion is that you can specify parameters manually in pipeline page and then run the pipeline after setting the parameters
The reason for this is:
1, The checkout section is expanded before everything happens in pipeline run.
2, The Queue button on PR page didn't provide pop-out window to select parameters.
Your pipeline definition should be like this:
trigger:
- none
parameters:
- name: ProjectName
default: xxx
- name: RepoName
default: xxx
- name: BranchName
default: xxx
pool:
vmImage: windows-latest
steps:
- checkout: git://${{parameters.ProjectName}}/${{parameters.RepoName}}#${{parameters.BranchName}}
- script: |
dir
displayName: 'Run a multi-line script'
Manually select the parameters every time: