How to Tag a branch Automatically in Azure DevOps using extension (Tag/Branch Git On Release) - azure-devops

Question

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.

Answer 1

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...

Answer 2

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