Why is this Azure DevOps pipeline release failing? - azure-devops

This is an ASP.NET Core 3.0 project that builds with no errors, but when it triggers the pipeline to release to Azure App Service, it fails with the following error:
2019-11-10T23:09:23.8008460Z ##[error]Error: No package found with specified pattern: D:\a\r1\a***.zip
What needs to be done to fix the release pipeline? The pipeline release is pulling the latest build as its artifact.

Assumptions
The following info assumes that you are appropriately publishing your build artifact from your Build pipeline, and that you have added the correct build artifact into you release pipeline.
In your release pipeline you have specified a build artifact in the Artifacts area
When adding your build artifact to your release pipeline, you chose to give it an alias of Build Artifact. This means that at the very lease (with default settings) your .zip file will be in some sub-directory of $(system.DefaultWorkingDirectory)/Build Artifact/
A new unique folder in the agent is created for every release pipeline when you initiate a release, and the artifacts are downloaded into that folder. The $(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory) variable maps to this folder.
To ensure the uniqueness of every artifact download, each artifact source linked to a release pipeline is automatically provided with a specific download location known as the source alias. This location can be accessed through the variable:
$(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)\[source alias]
This uniqueness also ensures that, if you later rename a linked artifact source in its original location (for example, rename a build pipeline in Azure Pipelines or a project in Jenkins), you don't need to edit the task properties because the download location defined in the agent does not change.
The source alias is, by default, the name of the source selected when you linked the artifact source, prefixed with an underscore; depending on the type of the artifact source this will be the name of the build pipeline, job, project, or repository. You can edit the source alias from the artifacts tab of a release pipeline; for example, when you change the name of the build pipeline and you want to use a source alias that reflects the name of the build pipeline.
(from some of the abundant documentation
Instead of searching for your package using ***.zip (which isn't proper wildcard syntax) use Build Artifact/**/*.zip
** is for recursively searching into directories
(I don't know what folder)
* is for searching a part of a given level of the path
any file/folder that
starts with (SomeFile.*)
ends with (*File.zip)
and i think contains (*meFi*)

The pipeline YAML was missing the following tasks. Not sure why this isn't included in the ASP.NET Core template, very confusing for developers new to Azure DevOps.
- task: DotNetCoreCLI#2
inputs:
command: 'publish'
publishWebProjects: true
- task: CopyFiles#2
inputs:
targetFolder: '$(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)'
- task: PublishBuildArtifacts#1
inputs:
PathtoPublish: '$(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)'
ArtifactName: 'drop'
publishLocation: 'Container'

When adding an Artifact of Source type "Build", select "Default version" as "Latest from the build pipeline default branch with tags", as follows:

Related

How to download a Azure-Devops Pipeline Artifact into a different pipeline

I need to modify an existing YAML pipeline so that it downloads an artifact published from another existing ADO pipeline. The other pipeline is a Classic one in case it matters.
In the current setup, a daily Release pipeline takes the artifact from the Classic pipeline and pushes it to a company repository external to ADO.
Now, the YAML pipeline is only run occasionally and it is run manually. Currently it downloads the artifact from the external repo to which the Release pipeline pushed. This hasn't been a problem generally. However a recent issue highlighted that it would be desirable to be able to avoid the delays built in to the current approach and essentially just grab the artifact directly from the latest run of the Classic pipeline.
When I set out to do this, I assumed that it would be straightforward but I seem to have run into a brick wall. The only information I have found describes using DownloadPipelineArtifact#2 but this depends on various IDs like the pipeline ID and run ID which it seems are not easily obtainable.
I am pretty new to ADO. I'm not a devops person at all really but I've had this put on my plate. So before I spend too much time on this, am I missing something or is this just something that one should not really be doing in ADO? If it is possible, is there a guide somewhere?
UPDATE
Thanks to a useful answer from daniel-mann, I was able to get this working but there were some quirks that I thought I should mention in the event that they might be useful to anyone else.
When I started adding the DownloadPipelineArtifact#2 task (this was editing directly in ADO on a browser), ADO was hinting field names to me that seemed to be different from the documented ones. Possibly these were aliases but I had a hard time knowing what to trust with respect to documentation.
I also noticed a Settings "link" had appeared above the first line of the task definition. When I clicked on this it opened up an editor to the right of the page that helped fill in the fields. It provided dropdowns for things like the project and the pipeline ID.
This what I ended up with:
- task: DownloadPipelineArtifact#2
displayName: "my task description"
inputs:
buildType: 'specific'
project: <long "UID" string identifying project>
definition: <numeric id for pipeline>
buildVersionToDownload: 'latest'
artifactName: <name of artifact as defined in upstream pipeline>
targetPath: '$(Pipeline.Workspace)'
Note that the editor tool added a definition field, but apparently this is an alias for pipeline. I am not sure why it thinks this is more helpful.
Unfortunately the above did not work. I saw this error:
##[error]Pipeline Artifact Task is not supported in on-premises. Please use Build Artifact Task instead.
I don't know what caused this - perhaps the ADO setup in my organization? As I understand it the Build Artifact Task is deprecated in favour of the Pipeline Artifact Task but I did not have any choice but to try it and this time it did work for me.
This time I used the "Settings" editor from the outset and ended up with this:
- task: DownloadBuildArtifacts#0
displayName: "my task description"
inputs:
buildType: 'specific'
project: $(System.TeamProjectId)
pipeline: <numeric ID as above>
buildVersionToDownload: 'latest'
downloadType: 'single'
artifactName: '$(ARTNAME)'
downloadPath: '$(System.ArtifactsDirectory)'
The fields that I manually edited here were:
using our own ARTNAME variable that is we define to be the artifact name in one of our variable groups. The relevant variable group is imported to this pipeline.
using the builtin System.TeamProjectId for the project name. This seemed prefereable to having the "UID" string in there. (Though I also found that the normal name string for our project worked here too.)
but this depends on various IDs like the pipeline ID and run ID
Not for your use case.
You said
just grab the artifact directly from the latest run of the Classic pipeline.
In which case, referring to the parameters explained in the documentation,
# Download pipeline artifacts
# Download build and pipeline artifacts
- task: DownloadPipelineArtifact#2
inputs:
#source: 'current' # Options: current, specific
#project: # Required when source == Specific
#pipeline: # Required when source == Specific
#preferTriggeringPipeline: false # Optional
#runVersion: 'latest' # Required when source == Specific# Options: latest, latestFromBranch, specific
#runBranch: 'refs/heads/master' # Required when source == Specific && RunVersion == LatestFromBranch
#runId: # Required when source == Specific && RunVersion == Specific
#tags: # Optional
#artifact: # Optional
#patterns: '**' # Optional
#path: '$(Pipeline.Workspace)'
You would just need to set the project, pipeline, source: specific, and runVersion: latest parameters.
Or you could use the download alias, which is a little bit simpler but can achieve the same thing

How do I recover the name of a downloaded artifact in a deployment job of Azure DevOps?

I'm building a multi-stage pipeline in which my build stage stores a single file as a pipeline artifact. In the deployment stage the artifact is automatically download and I need the name of the file in order to proceed with the following steps.
Currently, I'm publishing as a variable the name of the file stored as the artifact of the build. I'm wondering if the download task would be able to provide the name of the file so that I can further decouple the build and deploy stages.
This is what I'm using right now:
- bash: |
jarFile=`ls -1 *.jar`
echo "##vso[task.setvariable variable=jarFile;isOutput=true]${jarFile}"
workingDirectory: target
name: mavenTarget
displayName: Finds name of built `.jar` file
And then in the deployment stage:
variables:
- name: jarFile
value: $[ stageDependencies.ci.build.outputs['mavenTarget.jarFile'] ]
I'm wondering if the download task would be able to provide the name of the file so that I can further decouple the build and deploy stages.
I am afraid that the Download build artifacts task has no built-in output variable that can represent the name of an artifact or the files in the Artifact.
The output variable of the download artifacts task is XXX.buildnumber. It doesn't contain the info about Artifacts Name or the files in Artifacts.
The cross-stage variables used in your Current YAML is an efficient way. You can continue to use the method.

Download all files from all artifacts (artifact names) except from one in AzureDevOps YAML pipelines

I have a pipeline with with some stages like
Build -> Dev -> Test -> Prod
The build stage generate some nugets for different parts of the system. As this happen in different jobs, a couple of artifact names is published like:
server\server.nupkg
client\client.nupkg
auth\auth.nupkg
Those are then consumed in the following stages that dowload, apply variable substitution to some configs and publish a new nuget configured to an environment as a drop.
For example the test stage has one job that transform the config in the needed nuget and publish that as an pipeline artifact. So at that point the artifacts for the hole pipeline looks like:
server\server.nupkg
client\client.nupkg
auth\auth.nupkg
Test
server.nupkg
client.nupkg
auth.nupkg
When it comes to the prod stage i want to download all *.nupkg from all artifact names except from the Test artifact name.
I've tried to use an exclude patterns in the 'DownloadPipelineArtifact' task like this but no success:
- task: DownloadPipelineArtifact#2
displayName: Download nugets
inputs:
buildType: 'current'
itemPattern: |
'*/*.nupkg'
'!Test'
'!Test/*.nupkg'
targetPath: '$(MyDirectory)/nugets'
Any ideas?
If server, client, auth and Test are different artifacts then you should be able to either download the first three separately or do it in a single task invocation by using "exclude" file matching pattern with first segment being the artifact name. See Publish and download artifacts in Azure Pipelines | Multiple artifacts.
Example #1, download artifacts separately:
- download: current
artifact: server
- download: current
artifact: client
- download: current
artifact: auth
Although, based on the current docs, the following example is supposed to work, it doesn't. It looks like the docs are incorrect. See this issue for details:
https://github.com/microsoft/azure-pipelines-agent/issues/3416
Example #2, download artifacts using file matching patterns:~~
Note double asterisk for recursive wildcard and the absence of the quotes that would be included literally in the multiline YAML string otherwise.
- download: current
patterns: |
**/*.nupkg
!Test/**

Azure DevOps YAML CI and CD pipeline

I have separate yaml pipelines for CI and CD in Azure DevOps Services.
CI pipeline will publish an artifact to a file share location. \fileshare\project
And in the CD pipeline I am using the CI pipeline as resource so that I can deploy the artifact produced from the CI pipeline.
resources:
pipelines:
- pipeline: POC_pipeline # identifier for the pipeline resource
source: CI-pipeline_YAML # source pipeline definition name
My question is how can I download this artifact and what's the pre-defined variable name to get the path of the published artifact from CI-pipeline.
I tried using but it doesn't download anything, this only works when I push the artifact to Azure DevOps.
steps:
- download: POC_pipeline
It seems download task cannot download artifacts that published to a file share. I can reproduce the same issue. You can report this problem(Click Report a problem and choose Azure devops) to Microsoft development team.
As workaround, you can use Download Fileshare Artifacts task to download fileshare artifacts.
- task: DownloadFileshareArtifacts#1
inputs:
filesharePath: '\fileshare\project'
artifactName: artifactName
downloadPath: $(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)
The artifacts will be downloaded to folder specified in downloadPath. In above example you will find the artifacts in $(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)/artifactName (ie. C:\agent\_work\2\a\artifactName)
Check here to find more predefined variables.
You can also use Download Pipeline Artifacts task to download the fileshare artifacts. You need to specify the source as specific, and other project, pipeline,runVersion attributes. See below:
- task: DownloadPipelineArtifact#2
inputs:
source: specific
project: yourProjectName
pipeline: CI-pipeline_YAML
runVersion: latest
path: $(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)
The artifacts will be downloaded to folder specified in path.
Noted: you need to run your pipeline on self-hosted agents which can access the file share.(It will fail with error `Unable to read directory \fileshare\project" on cloud agents).

UI Selenium tests on Azure Devops 2019

What is the correct way to run automated UI tests by a self-hosted agent?
I tried to add a tests step in the release pipeline but it's not working because the agent cannot find the DLLs with tests (they are in a few separate projects)
##[warning]No test assemblies found matching the pattern: **\Test.UI.dll,!**\*TestAdapter.dll,!**\obj\**.
Currently, the release pipeline is simple: one artifact from the build pipeline and one stage with the following steps:
1. IIS Web App Deploy
2. IIS Web App Manage
3. VsTest: tests are selected using Test assemblies option
No test assemblies found matching the pattern.
It seems that the .dll files don't exist in the artifact or under the path of the release agent. You may need to share more information about the Pipeline. (e.g. build agent, pipeline definition and vstest task definition)
Before this, you can refer to the following steps for troubleshooting.
First of all, you need to make sure that the .dll files exist in the build artifacts.
You could check this in Build Summary -> Artifacts. You could download it and check the files in the artifact.
If the files don't exist, you could add a Copy files task before the Publish Artifacts task.
For example:
- task: CopyFiles#2
displayName: 'Copy Files to: $(build.artifactstagingdirectory)'
inputs:
SourceFolder: '$(agent.builddirectory)'
TargetFolder: '$(build.artifactstagingdirectory)'
enabled: false
Then the "VsTest" task will find the files in $(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory) by default(No customization). In release pipeline, the path is equals to C:\agent\_work\rx\a (e.g. C:\agent\_work\r1\a)
Since you are using the self-hosted agent , you could directly check the files in the target path on your local machine.
If you couldn't find the target files, you may need to modify the search folder or Test files path.
You also could check the file path in the Release Pipeline log -> Download Artifacts Step.