cannot update the powershell task version on azure devops pipeline - powershell

​when I am creating a build or a release the PowerShell task only allows me to choose between versions 1* and 2*. I have installed more recent versions of PowerShell on the build agents and I have also added it as a capability on the agents but I still see only versions 1* and 2*. so can you please help me?

That's not the PowerShell version, it's the PowerShell task version. Azure DevOps build/release tasks are versioned, and that version is completely unrelated to the version of PowerShell.
To use a different version of PowerShell, just make sure the PATH environment variable on the agent is pointing to the correct version of powershell.exe. If you want to use PowerShell Core (pwsh), set the pwsh flag to true. Refer to the documentation.

Related

Debug Azure Devops powershell scripts locally in VSCode

Judging from the Debugging Azure Functions https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-functions/functions-debug-powershell-local, it looks possible. Can somebody post a detailed example?
Let's say we have pipeline that run the Build.ps1. The script installs other PS modules builds my Visual studio solution and creates the installer.
The installer part breaks so I guess I have to use a Wait-Debugger before it and try to somehow attach to the agent powershell process. But oi am not certain how to do it.

Execute SQLCMD.exe from PowerShell in an Azure DevOps Release Pipeline

I'm porting our deployment infrastructure to Azure DevOps (formerly Visual Studio Team Services), but I've run into an issue I can't find any good solutions to.
We're using EF Core Migrations, and to work around some unrelated issues we need to dynamically wrap SQL scripts in SQLCmd, which is easy using PowerShell.
However, when executing our script as a regular PowerShell step in the release pipeline, it fails because SQLCMD.exe is not available. Not so surprising - but I also can't find any documented way of installing it.
Is there a tool installer or some similar ready-made component that will let me execute a PowerShell script that calls out to SQLCMD.exe (via Invoke-SqlCmd) as part of an Azure Devops Pipeline? If not, what's the easiest way to accomplish this anyway?
Haven't tried this myself, but are you allowed to install Powershell modules for the current user on a hosted agent? Because Invoke-SqlCmd is part of the SqlServer module, which can be installed from the Powershell gallery with:
Install-Module -Name SqlServer -Scope CurrentUser
You could try to create a package to install the needed tools on the agent, since that is now possible. You could use a Chocolatey task to run a package from it
There is an (old) chocolatey package available that you could try: https://chocolatey.org/packages?q=SQLCMD
Can't you use normal sql scripts via one of the available extensions?
See here or here
Ofcourse, using a self-hosted agent could be an option, then you can install anything you want.
This one worked for me
Install-Module -Name SqlServer -Force -AllowClobber
Not sure about -AllowClobber though, on my local PC the command complained about something without it and I didn't check on Azure tbh.

VSTS Run Powershell Script on Mac with Parameters

I have a Xamarin.Forms project wherein the Android project is built in VSTS using a hosted build agent which runs a powershell script at run-time.
I need to run the same powershell script against the Xamarin.iOS which uses an On Premise Mac Build Agent. But how?
I found this answer and a comment under the answer also had the same question regarding parameters, so I am posting the solution here since the issue is slightly different and that question has an accepted answer.
First off, I installed powershell on the mac using these instructions and I modified the shell script task to include the Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) environmental variables that I wanted to pass to the powershell script.
Next, I pass the arguments through to the called powershell script by slightly modifying the shell script mentioned by the referenced answer.
#!/bin/bash
powershell ./Version.ps1 $1 $2
Finally, in the powershell script, I catch the arguments that have been passed through using using param like this:
param([string]$version, [string]$path)
Wherein I can now use the variables $version and $path which contain the original arguments entered in VSTS to the needs of my powershell script.

Run powershell build step in VSTS agent installed on mac?

I installed VSTS build agent on mac to build xamarin iOS project. Builds worked fine until I added powershell build step.
Even though I installed powershell for mac (https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell) and re-installed the agent, VSTS complains it does not have agent that is capable to run the build.
No agent could be found with the following capabilities:
DotNetFramework, Xamarin.iOS, npm
When I disable the build step, builds work just fine.
Is it possible to run powershell build step on Mac?
As MrHinsh clarified, the PowerShell task cannot be used on Mac.
As a workaround I used ShellScript task:
With the following bash script:
#!/bin/bash
powershell ./SetAppVersion.ps1
Also, the powershell installer did not seem to add powershell to my PATH so I had to add it:
$ export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/microsoft/powershell/6.0.0-alpha.16
If you're sure that DotNetFramework is installed then you can go to the Agent Queues settings and add a custom Capability to it called exactly that.
That should allow it to run but it might fail after that if the agent can't actually find them, but it might also succeed so it's probably worth a try.
No, you can't use a PowerShell task on a Mac, only node tasks are supported.
PowerShell tasks as currently written in PowerShell3 which is not supported on Mac. You can request that the team implement this on http://visualstudio.uservoice.com
In TFS build go to Agents Queues=>Capablilities=>Add variable named as DotNetFramework and give value for mac agent's dotnet framework path.
It's fix for the issue "No agent could be found with the following capabilities:DotNetFramework"
This is a follow-up to the accepted answer to address a question in a comment which I also had.
Thanks to spatialguy for posting and finding a simple solution to this problem. I had the same problem as KeithA45:
QUESTION: What if you wanted to do the same, but also pass arguments to the Bash script which passes them to the Powershell script?
I found a solution to this, first off, I modified the shell script task to include the Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) environmental variables that I wanted to pass to the powershell script.
Next, I pass the arguments through to the called powershell script by slightly modifying the shell script mentioned by the accepted answer.
#!/bin/bash
powershell ./Version.ps1 $1 $2
Finally, in the powershell script, I catch the arguments that have been passed through using using param like this:
param([string]$version, [string]$path)
Wherein I can now use the variables $version and $path which contain the original arguments entered in VSTS to the needs of my powershell script.
Things seem to have moved forward because I ran successfully today a PowerShell#2 task on a Mac Self-Hosted Agent from an Azure DevOps build pipeline.
By checking "Enable system diagnostics" when queuing the build, the log shows me that the task found itself the path to the PowerShell Core (pwsh) that I installed on my Mac with the help of Homebrew (brew cask install powershell - see https://learn.microsoft.com/fr-fr/powershell/scripting/install/installing-powershell-core-on-macos).

Where does Powershell and PSake execute msbuild from?

While making a build automation I came across an issue. Along with upgrading Visual Studio 2013, the path to MSBuild has moved as described here http://timrayburn.net/blog/visual-studio-2013-and-msbuild/
I've updated my system path to point to this new location for msbuild. Using a regular cmd prompt msbuild resolves just fine. But running my scripts in powershell, it seems to still pick up the old one, and showing the issue as described in the link. How can I see and change where powershell and psake picks up msbuild from, so I can point to the expected version?
PSake supports more MSBuild versions on one box. You can choose version and platform eg. 4.0x64 with framework directive. Path to MSBuild tools is not taken from $env:path but is computed. It uses registry to find proper path.
VS 2013 and MSBuild Tools are supported since PSake 4.3
In PS type [Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable("Path")
Do you see both paths? In what sequence do they appear? What occurs in cmd vs ps when you switch the order?