I have an Azure DevOps pipeline build that has several steps and the build is long. Every time there is something wrong with the build we review the logs and identify issues or come up with theories, then in case of a theory we have to insert a diagnostic command line (such as get directory, show contents of a file, etc) in between the steps; and in case of a fix we add a fix but we have to wait for the whole pipeline to rerun and find out. This is causing us to take a lot of time to fix build issues.
If we had access to the state of the agent of an unfinished build and we could just log on using RDP or any other terminal and checkout the contents, and the state of the files on disk that would have saved us a lot of hours.
Is there any way with Azure DevOps to do any diagnostic of this type?
No, if you are using hosted agent. If you are using self-hosted agent you can obviously log in to that one. You can, however, implement steps that only work if the build failed and those steps can attempt to capture information you are interested in (say publish the state of the build directory).
If you are using Azure DevOps Services, there is a new REST API version out that will let you do a "preview" run of changes to the YAML definitions: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/release-notes/2020/sprint-165-update#preview-fully-parsed-yaml-document-without-committing-or-running-the-pipeline
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I am trying to create a release pipeline in Azure DevOps. We already have a functioning build pipeline that works well, it is able to package the build with VSBuild and publish it as an artifact. Then in the release pipeline I am using an IIS Deployment job (which includes IIS Manage and IIS Deploy tasks) and it gets that artifact to deploy.
The problem is that we already have a publish profile (.pubxml) that should take care of pretty much everything the IIS Deployment is doing (at least as far I as I understand it). So to me it seems I have two options that don't require me to refactor the project configuration itself.
I can try to mimic the settings on the IIS Deployment job to match our .pubxml as closely as possible and manually applying any changes that aren't doable through the task settings. Obviously this is not ideal as that would require us to update both when ever we make changes and it introduces a large chance of the pipeline breaking down over time.
I can scrap the idea of using IIS Deployment and just use a VSBuild task that uses arguments /p:DeployOnBuild=true /p:PublishProfile=Staging. This doesn't seem like best practices because it means my release pipeline isn't passing a build package to deploy, it is just creating a new one at each stage.
So is there a better option that would allow me to utilize the package I created with VSBuild and the .pubxml configuration together in a deploy? If that isn't possible then are either of my options the "correct" way to handle my situation or am I just missing another method of deployment I could use?
Thank you for any help or insight you can provide. Please let me know if there is any more information I can give that would be useful.
You can try using publish settings file (*.publishsettings) for your IIS deployment.
A publish settings file (.publishsettings) is different than a publishing profile (.pubxml) created in Visual Studio. A publish settings file is created by IIS or Azure App Service, or it can be manually created, and then it can be imported into Visual Studio.
To view more details, you can see:
Publish an application to IIS by importing publish settings in Visual Studio
Deploy your app to a folder, IIS, Azure, or another destination
So unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a way I can achieve everything I wanted in this. The publish profiles are required for when we build the project so without making changes to how we configure those I need to build the project whenever I want to deploy. Ultimately I went with option #2. I essentially just copied most of the build tasks used in the testing pipeline and placed those in the release pipeline with a few modified commands to actually deploy the build once finished. It all seems to work just fine but still doesn't feel like best practices. If I am missing something please let me know and I will make updates as appropriate.
I'm running a deployment on Azure pipelines and the release got stuck while copying files. This resulted in an unending process which is not desirable.
The error I received was:
ERROR 32 (0x00000020) Copying File
C:\azagent\A2_work\r3\a_mach1-light\build\MyProject\HtmlRenderer.dll
The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another
process.
I think this issue is not a permanent one since I've been able to successfully run the same release pipeline several times in the past but I want to figure out why it happens.
I've read several docs relating to Azure pipelines and troubleshooting on microsoft's website but none has been useful.
I've also tried to rerun the build pipeline so it could create another release but the issue still persists.
I'd be happy to get advice from anyone who has experienced this before.
Thanks
You can try restarting the "Azure Pipelines Agent (MyCompanyName.MyMachineName)" service on the machine which hosts your deployment agent. See below screenshot.
For more Troubleshooting steps:
Detect files and folders in use
You can use tools like Process Monitor and Process Explorer to find out what process is using this specific file. See this thread.
Anti-virus exclusion
Anti-virus software scanning your files can cause file or folder in use errors during a build or release. Adding an anti-virus exclusion for your agent directory and configured "work folder" may help to identify anti-virus software as the interfering process.
If you use Msbuild in your pipeline:
MSBuild and /nodeReuse:false
MSBuild and /maxcpucount:[n]
Check this document for more information above troubleshooting steps.
I'm trying to set Build Server machine in way that Build Agent is configured on it, and is targeting Azure DevOps Service (Cloud) collection, or organization as it is named like that for now. There is established connection but problem that I'm faced with is regarding workspaces.
When I try to run build definition, checkout step fails due to "Can not determine workspace..." error. As I run the advised command
tf workspaces /collection:<collection_url>
on Build Server, I can build given project, but, when try another project, the same story. I have to run the mentioned command again (new workspace is appeared in the list) and then I'm able to build that project.
Can someone point me on right way in diagnostic or tell the cause/solution if faced with this already?
According to the description and this thread which i assume is also posted by you,seems the agent in Azure DevOps is the one you used in TFS which is called as migration.
As I run the advised command
tf workspaces /collection:<collection_url>
on Build Server, I can build given project, but, when try another project, the same story.
It looks like the build definition requires a specific workspace which you managed by manual command.
What about create a new agent in Azure DevOps which is quite simple see if the problem can be resolved.
I run UI tests for my app in a release definition in Azure DevOps. I generate test report. I decided that it is convenient to save it in the build directory(wrong assumption?). The directory where the report is is:
browserName + DateTime.Now.ToString("ddMMyyyyHHmmss", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture) + #"\";
so the directory regex would be for instance : Chrome\d+
I build the test project in the release pipeline, run the tests, then I try to publish my report. The goal is to make it available in the Azure DevOps, or send a link to download it or any other way that makes it accessible.
To do so I added a step Publish Build Artifact
but then I get an error:
but then I don't have a fileshare available(I am able to create Azure Storage Account for instance) additionaly Publish Build Artifact doesn't support wildcards so I can't use regex Chrome\d+ to pin down the report directory.
Question: How can I make a file that is generated during release pipeline accessible?
EDIT: I found out in the meantime that I have Sharepoint available with enough storage.
Unfortunately publishing from release pipeline is not allowed.
Can we publish artifacts in release pipeline - Azure devOps?
One way to get around this is to try to publish Universal package in release pipeline but it has limitations. Create feed and publish there your files so you can share URL to others. It is not best option but if your test results files are not large you can publish to the feed and clean it sometimes(manually, because REST API provides way to delete package but does not provide function to get list of all packages published).
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/tasks/package/universal-packages?view=azure-devops
The disadvantage of this option is that for free users it has limit up to 2GB. You can delete old packages when required but it takes around 24 hours to free space. But you can forget to free space and your pipeline will fail with not enough storage error and by next 24 hours you will have to disable this task to let pipeline pass.
"I decided that it is convenient to save it in the build directory"
Remember that agent working directory is cleaned depending on option you choose.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/repos/pipeline-options-for-git?view=azure-devops#clean-the-local-repo-on-the-agent
I am using Azure DevOps pipelines releases to try to deploy a windows service on premise. Periodically, the windows copy files step will hang and try again every 30 seconds and output "The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process" as it attempts to copy the build artifacts.
We've ruled out any kind of permission issue. We've tried all sorts of tools to see what might be locking these files up and they don't tell us much.
This has happened before in the past with some other projects I was also trying to release on premise. Sometimes, I am able to just wait an hour or two and redeploy successfully (not exactly a solution I'm satisfied with), but this one particular project, a windows service, seems to be experiencing the issue very, very frequently. Almost every time I try to deploy.
Has anyone else experienced this? Or any word from Microsoft on the issue?
Thanks in advance.
I experienced this issue while trying to create and deploy a release from an existing artifact. So I have a build pipeline on Azure Devops that generates artifacts to be used by the release pipeline. All I did was to make a commit that triggered the build pipeline which generated a new artifact and triggered the release and it worked fine.
It was the first time I experienced this and I had no clue on why it happened.
I'm going to be doing more research and share any thing I find helpful.