I am looking for hosting .exe files in Azure Devops. It seems to don't have feature similar to how we host executable or build files in GitHub for other people to download. Do we have such kind of feature to host the executables and have the latest commit tagged?
You can try publishing the executable or build files as Build Artifacts in Azure devops build pipeline.
You can create a pipeline in azure devops and using Publish build artifacts task to store the executable or build files in azure pipeline
See example here to create a classic azure pipeline. See Here for yaml pipeline example.
When you run the pipeline. You will see the commit hash and the files uploaded in the highlighted field of the build summary page shown in below screenshot. And you download the files from there.
You can retain this artifacts by Clicking retain in the pipeline run. See below
You can also change the retention policy for your pipeline. See here for more information.
Go the Project settings page-->Settings under Pipeline. See below:
Related
I have a DACPAC deployment task which is failing, because for some reason the value of the $(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory) pipeline variable is changing between the build pipeline and the release pipeline. In the build pipeline, the variable is set to C:\agent\_work\2\a, but in the release pipeline it's C:\agent\_work\r2\a. This is causing the release pipeline to fail when it tries to deploy the DACPAC artifact, because the folder it's looking in is empty; the folder where the artifact actually is is ignored. How do I make these variables consistent between the build and release pipelines so that the artifact is retrieved from the same folder it's generated in? These variables appear to be built in, so I don't see any way to change them. I could always hardcode a path, but that seems a bit kludgy...
In releases you have System.ArtifactsDirectory which is
The directory to which artifacts are downloaded during deployment of a release. The directory is cleared before every deployment if it requires artifacts to be downloaded to the agent. Same as Agent.ReleaseDirectory and System.DefaultWorkingDirectory.
Example: C:\agent_work\r1\a
and in pipelines/builds Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory
The local path on the agent where any artifacts are copied to before being pushed to their destination. For example: c:\agent_work\1\a
A typical way to use this folder is to publish your build artifacts with the Copy files and Publish build artifacts tasks.
Note: Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory and Build.StagingDirectory are interchangeable. This directory is purged before each new build, so you don't have to clean it up yourself.
See Artifacts in Azure Pipelines.
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.
This is in line with your experience. And you cannot change it, as they are predefined. But can you clarify why this is a problem for you?
In the release pipeline, you can't directly access the files in the build pipeline, not only because the working directory is different, but also because they do not use the same agent. You need to download the artifacts first, and then use them in the release pipeline.
You can use the following ways to download artifacts:
Use the Download Build Artifacts task.
Go to the edit release pipeline page -> Select Add artifact -> Select Build -> Fill in the information related to the build pipeline (Notice the value of Source alias)-> Add it. You will find your artifacts are downloaded in $(System.ArtifactsDirectory)/${Source alias}
For more information about consuming artifacts in release pipelines, you can click this document.
Oh, I think I figured it out. Each release pipeline stage has an option called "Artifact download" which lets you specify which artifacts out of all those linked in the pipeline are actually used by that stage. I needed to check the appropriate checkboxes there in order to use the artifacts in the stage's tasks.
Simply speaking, does Azure Devops have something that works very close to GitHub releases?
I would like to publish artifacts that are created during an Azure DevOps pipeline so that they be easily viewed and downloaded afterwards in a central location. The closest equivalent to what I'm looking for is how GitHub releases work, where there is a web page listing out all the versions of the repository and the assets that can be downloaded for each version.
It seems to me that published artifacts within Azure DevOps pipelines are always tied to the run of the pipeline, and there isn't an easy way to see one list of artifacts that have been created in a historical view like GitHub releases provides, but maybe I'm missing something.
Azure Artifacts does not meet my needs because it is tied to particular packaging formats and is meant to be used for developer tooling.
I would like to publish artifacts that are created during an Azure
DevOps pipeline so that they be easily viewed and downloaded
afterwards in a central location.
As a workaround ,you can switch Artifact publish location to A file share in Publish Pipeline Artifacts task then specify your network drive folder path.
Specifying the path to the file share where you want to copy the files. The path must be a fully-qualified path or a valid path relative to the root directory of your repository. Publishing artifacts from a Linux or macOS agent to a file share is not supported.
Besides, there should be no other built-in hosting, I am afraid that Azure Artifact is the closest to your needs. because it is tied to particular packaging formats you can consider using Universal Packages.
I tried to copy task extension on azure pipeline: $vmFolder="c:/users/[username]/desktop and also tried
$vmFolder="c:/users/public/desktop but still my artefacts are deployed inside c:/azagent/work/ location. If anyone has an idea, please explain me the process step by step.
Could you provide a little more detail about what you're trying to achieve?
My feeling is that there may be a confussion about what is an Agent (C:\azagent\work is the work directory in a machine where you, very likely, have installed an Agent) and the Machine where you want to deploy your code to run.
Bests.
When you publish the build artifacts in Azure DevOps, for the location you could only choose "Server" or a UNC file share.
Artifact publish location argument:
Azure Pipelines/TFS (TFS 2018 RTM and older: Artifact type: Server)
is the best and simplest choice in most cases. This choice causes the
artifacts to be stored in Azure Pipelines or TFS. But if you're
using a private Windows agent, you've got the option to drop to a
UNC file share.
More details please refer our official doc -- Artifacts in Azure Pipelines
The remaining alternative is to add a download artifacts task in the end of pipeline to download your published artifacts to your Destination directory.
Im using Azure DevOps and have setup a "Release" pipeline, not a "Build" pipeline, and I want Release Pipeline to get is Artifacts from my Azure Storage Accounts.
The Artifacts have already been built and are Nuget package (.nupkg) files. I have copied them into an Azure Storage Account as File Storage. All they need to do is be use by a release pipeline.
So my question is how do I get my Azure Release Pipeline to get these files and use them in the Release?
There isn't any native way to download automatically the binaries from a storage at the beginning of the release, you will have to add your own tasks to download it from the release (and add the connection string as a variables).
The usual pattern to share generated files between a build and a release is to use an Azure DevOps Artifact. You will need to add a the "Publish Build Artifacts" task to your build and then you will be able to link it to your release by clicking "+ Add" on the artifact panel.
I'm trying to build my console application through Azure DevOps. So to this I'm following this tutorial.
The follow images, are from what I already did.
Build Solution Pipeline
Build Solution Pipeline / Publish
Build Solution Pipeline / Artifact
Deploy WebJob Pipeline
Deploy WebJob Pipeline / Variables
When I run the Build Solution the zip seems to work, because I see it.
But when I run the Deploy WebJob Pipeline I get ##[error]D:\a\1\s\***.zip not found.. I tried wwwroot/App_Data/jobs/, but still the same error.
What could I be doing wrong? What's the right way to set the zippedArtifactPath?
You're following the tutorial incorrectly. The tutorial is telling you to create a release. You're using a build pipeline to try to release. Although you can do that, you shouldn't.
You have two options:
If you want to keep using the visual designer, use a release. Look at the "Release" tab for this. Releases can be tied to build artifacts and will handle downloading the build artifact automatically.
If you want to use YAML, refer to the YAML documentation and set up a multi-stage pipeline to release.
What could I be doing wrong?
Check your error messgae ##[error]D:\a\1\s\***.zip not found we can find in the second build pipeline, the PS tried to get the xx.zip in xxx\s folder while in first build pipeline you published the xx.zip to xxx\a folder.
The $(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory) for build pipeline is xx\s folder while that for release pipeline is xx\a folder. In first build pipeline we published the xx.zip to Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory which is a xx\a folder, so we can't access the xx.zip from xx\s folder in second build pipeline's PS script.
What's the right way to set the zippedArtifactPath?
It's not recommended to build and deploy one web app using two build pipelines. For normal logic, we should do this by using combination like build+release pipeline just like the Toturial and Daniel suggests above.
We can use this variable $(Release.PrimaryArtifactSourceAlias) to get the artifact directory.
In your powerShell script you can set path variable like:
$path = "$(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)\$(Release.PrimaryArtifactSourceAlias)\webjobs_drop\[ZIP_File_Name].zip"
[your build artifact name]\webjobs_drop[your zipped files].zip
"your build artifact name" - you should get it from your release pipelines Artifacts stage from where you are selecting your build artifacts