We're building and deploying our application to 30 separate web apps every night, and I would like to know which release every web app is currently on. For instance "Release-12345".
The value exists in the release variable Release.ReleaseName from Release variables (MS doc), but I have no idea on how to make my pipeline use that value. My approach for now is to write it to the web.config, and the let the application read that value on demand. But if there's another, more efficient or "correct" way of doing it, I'm open for anything.
It's a classic usage of "replace tokens" tasks, there are many extensions in the marketplace, the most popular is Replace Tokens.
You need to add a placeholder in the web.config, for example:
<add key="Release_number" value="#{Release_number}#" />
In the release variables you need to add a variable Release_number with the value $(Release.ReleaseName), and add the Replace Tokens task in your release pipeline with configuration of:
Target Files: web.config
Token Prefix: #{
Token Suffix: }#
Now, the task will search inside the web.config file strings that match the pattern and will replace them with the value from the release variables.
Related
With Azure DevOps release pipeline I'm planning to tag my brach Automatically by using the below extension which was created by Micheal Barry Tag\Branch Git on Release. See the below image:
I'm a bit wondering how to customize Tag name as UAT_$(date:yyyyMMdd)$(Rev:.r). Since this has limited documentation, this is how I try to add(See below)
How can I achieve this? Also, I'm more interested in how to fill these advanced options for this extension.
The $(date:yyyyMMdd)$(Rev:.r) is only supported in BuildNumber (Options=>Build Number Format) and ReleaseNumber (Options=>Release Name format). So if you put $(date:yyyyMMdd)$(Rev:.r) directly in Static Tag Name, the task can't evaluate its value.
Here're several directions to do what you want:
Use $(date:yyyyMMdd)$(Rev:.r) as release name format.
Then use UAT_$(Release.ReleaseName) in Static Tag Name input.
The result:
PS: If you set build pipeline as release pipeline's artifact source, you can also use $(Build.BuildNumber)/$(Build.DefinitionName) in your Release name format.
2.If you prefer to use Release-$(date:yyyyMMdd)$(Rev:.r) as release name format. Now since what you want is UAT_xxx, you need to use the Regex option:
Assuming your release name's instance is Release-20200518.5, now the tag would be UAT_20200518.5 if you configure the task following my inputs above.
In addition:
When release name format is $(date:yyyyMMdd)$(Rev:.r), you releases would be:
You can choose to use the Static Tag Name, check #1 above.
And when the name format is Release-$(date:yyyyMMdd)$(Rev:.r), you releases would be:
You should use regex option in that third-party task, check #2 above. About what is Regex see here, also there's many documents/blogs online about Regex topic...
You are using the wrong task in your pipeline. Would suggest using the git tag task, it works just fine to me and you can use your naming in the tag field
Git Tag Task
I find this extension much easier to setup and its satisfying our needs. So basically my git tag=assembly version. I am doing this every time we have a release on production environment(change assemblyInfo information and store that in Variable in the build definition). There are set of tasks on the marketplace to allow read from asemblyInfo and write to it. For the git tag task i just use the previously set Tag variable which basically is incremented by one every new release. You can check more in the pictures bellow
So i am actually just adding simple tag to mirror my assemblyVersion but in the tag message i am also adding my build informations that looks like this $(build.buildNumber)-$(Tag)
If you want to have a deeper look into azure devops predefined variables you can do that here Use predefined variables
Azure DevOps urls to files and to wiki entries contain &version=GBmaster and &wikiVersion=GBwikiMaster respectively.
Is it possible to configure DevOps not to append it?
Today I get:
https://myorg.visualstudio.com/MyProject/_git/MyRepo?path=%2Fsrc%2FMyFile.cs&version=GBmaster
https://dev.azure.com/rbtech/Redback/_wiki/wikis/MyOrg.wiki?pagePath=%2MyPage&pageId=204&wikiVersion=GBwikiMaster
I wish for:
https://myorg.visualstudio.com/MyProject/_git/MyRepo?path=%2Fsrc%2FMyFile.cs
https://dev.azure.com/rbtech/Redback/_wiki/wikis/MyOrg.wiki?pagePath=%2MyPage&pageId=204
This is the default behavior of AzureDevop basically &version/ &wikiversion is denoted which branch the code/wiki is showing in the UI. Even if you don't provide the Version AzureDevOps will automatically append it to indicate which branch is chosen.
Let's say in your repo you have multiple branches means like master/ develop then based on the branch you choose the &version will change automatically like &version=GBmaster or &version=GBdevelop if you don't provide the default branch will be appended in the query.
Is it possible to configure DevOps not to append it?
No, there isn't a way to configure it. It's the expected behavior as Jayendran described, it's a tag which marks the file version from which branch.
If you want to see the contents of the files without the &version=GBmaster, then you can try call the REST API : Items - Get
For example:
https://{organization}.visualstudio.com/{Project}/_apis/git/repositories/{Repository ID}/items?path=WAP/WAP.Tests/Properties/AssemblyInfo.cs
TL;DR: Search and replace placeholders in a text file with the decrypted values of secrets in a variable group.
I would like to use a PowerShell script to receive a variable group in a release pipeline and then iterate through the list, performing search-and-replace on a file being released.
The variables in the variable list are secrets so I want to overwrite the placeholders in the file with the decrypted value of the variables.
The values of the variables are environment specific, so I do not want to provide the values at build time and do not want to include the decrypted values in a stored artifact.
The file being search-replaced will be used in an execution at release time but will not be deployed to a host, so will be destroyed upon completion of the pipeline execution.
The Tokenization task from the Visual Studio Marketplace does this job well. You'll need to install it into your Azure DevOps organisation, it's available at https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=TotalALM.totalalm-tokenization
By default the Tokenization task uses double underscores to identify the placeholders. It will replace any text that that matches the name of a variable in your release definition as long as it's surrounded by double underscores.
So if you want to write the value of a variable called MySecretVariable into your file you'll need to add a place holder like __MySecretVariable__ into the file where ever you want that value to be written.
The Tokenization task will write any encrypted values into the file in plain text but in the release logs they will be obfuscated.
If you're storing your variables in a variable group just link that to the release definition and set the scope to the appropriate environment.
So, I've found that, as long as I have a Base64 token configured for Variable Groups (click 'Show all scopes' when creating a new PAT) then I can call GET https://dev.azure.com/{organization}/{project}/_apis/distributedtask/variablegroups/{groupId}?api-version=5.1-preview.1 to get the variable group I need.
The above, however, will not return a value for secrets, although there is a hack/workaround for this (involving multiple pipeline steps).
The advisable route is to create a Key Vault in Azure and perform the processing either in Powershell or code.
As I need the decrypted key values passed into my application via a repeated find-replace, I have implemented a Powershell script in one Release pipeline step and consume the output in the next step.
I have lots of URL values and their keys. But there is no way to batch import the variables and the "value" controls are also not text boxes in the Variables Group page to perform chrome browser extensions assisted find and replace.
If this is possible, what is the syntax to refer to the key?
As in, I have a variable App.URL : www.contoso.com.
I am using the key to substitute value in my next variable like this Login.URL : $(App.URL)\Login and this doesn't work.
GitHub link : https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/vsts-docs/issues/3902#issuecomment-489694654
This isn't currently available, not sure if it will be. Can you create a task early in your pipeline that sets the variables you need in subsequent tasks/steps? This gives you more control as you can store the script along with your source. You could then use a pipeline variable for the environment you're in and let your script use that to set values appropriately.
See Set variables in scripts in the MS docs.
If it's not possible to re-architect your app to concatenate the url strings in the application, what the previous commenter said about creating a simple script to do that for you would be the way to go. Ie:
#!/bin/bash
#full login url
fullLoginUrl=$APP.URL\$LOGINSUFFIX
echo "##vso[task.setvariable variable=Login.URL]$fullLoginUrl
Otherwise, perhaps playing around with the run time vs compile time variables in YAML pipelines might be worth trying.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/process/variables?view=azure-devops&tabs=yaml%2Cbatch#understand-variable-syntax
I would like to customize my Release Name Format to use the build id of my release artifact.
I tried using $(release.artifact._myartifact.buildid) but that is just seen as string. How would I achieve this?
I also tried to configure a group variable but this gave the same result.
The solution to my question on customizing the vsts release name format was found on following page under Primary artifact variables
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/vsts/pipelines/release/variables?view=vsts&tabs=powershell
The predefined variable Build.Buildnumber is the same as Release.Artifacts.{Primary artifact alias}.BuildNumber.
In my case I used $(Build.BuildNumber)-$(rev:r) to get the desired result.
At first this was not working because I had multiple artifacts. Make sure you select the right artifact as primary artifact.