Azure DevOps Pipeline Copy Files Task Target Directory Value - azure-devops

I am new to Azure DevOps. I tried many ways but nothing helped. I am trying to create a pipeline which has Copy Files Task. I have folder structure like below
Bin
Common
abc.dll
Staging
Bin
Common
I want to copy abc.dll from Bin\Common to Staging\Bin\Common
In my Copy Files Task I am giving below
Source: Bin/Common
Contents: *.dll
Target Folder: Staging/Bin/Common
In Advanced:
Clean Target Folder: Check
Overwrite: Check
The Copy File Task succeeds and when I go to my Repo I donot see abc.dll in Staging\Bin\Common folder. In my Copy File Task log I see
Copying D:\a\1\s\Bin\Common\abc.dll to Staging\Bin\Common\abc.dll
I guess it must be
Copying D:\a\1\s\Bin\Common\abc.dll to D:\a\1\s\Staging\Bin\Common\abc.dll
Thanks in advance.
SOLUTION
Thanks to 4c74356b41 for pointing me in right direction. I accepted and marked as answer. As suggested, I created variable and used it like below
Variable Name: BinCommonStagingFolder
Variable Value: $(Build.Repository.LocalPath)\Staging\Bin\Common\
I used the variable in my Copy Files Task like below to copy only files which I need not all files
Source: Bin/Common
Contents:
abc.dll
abc.pdb
Target Folder: $(BinCommonStagingFolder)
In Advanced:
Clean Target Folder: Check
Overwrite: Check

i guess you should add full path, you can use build varible for that:
Target Folder: $(Build.Repository.LocalPath)\Staging\Bin\Common\
this would reference the root of the repo you checked out

For me, the issue was because I migrated from a Windows pipeline to a Linux one and path separators "\" on Windows hadn't been updated to "/" causing relative paths to be wrongly interpreted.

Related

What does "Package or folder" refer to in the File transform task in a release pipeline?

I'm completely new to Azure DevOps Pipelines so if I'm doing something incorrectly I'd appreciate a nod in the right direction... I setup a build pipeline and that seems to be working, now I'm trying to setup a release pipeline in order to run tests, it's mostly based on Microsoft's documentation:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/test/run-automated-tests-from-test-hub?view=azure-devops
Before running tests I need to transform a config file to replace some variables like access keys, usernames, etc. What I setup is what I have below but for the life of me I can't figure out what text box Package or folder refers to. The documentation is super helpful as you can imagine:
File path to the package or a folder
but what package or what folder is this referring to??? I've tried several different things but everything errors with
##[error]Error: Nopackagefoundwithspecifiedpattern D:\a\r1\a\**\*.zip
or pretty much whatever I specify for a value.
The File Transform task supports the .zip files.
Test with the default File Transform task settings, I could reproduce this issue.
In Release pipeline, the file path could has one more node for the build artifacts .zip file.
The format example:
$(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)\{Source alias name}\{Artifacts name}\*.zip
So you could try to set the $(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)/**/**/*.zip in Package Or folder field
For example:
On the other hand, you can check the specific path in the Release log -> Download Artifacts Step.
$(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory): D:\a\r1\a
You could aslo use this specific path in the task.
Update:
If your file is Project Folder, you refer to the following sample:
File structure:
Task Settings:
Note:You only need to assign to the folder node.
You could also select the folder path via ... option.

Azure DevOps AzureBlob File Copy Task Wildcard Directory Source Path

I have a Release Pipeline setup to extract my build artifact and then I use the RegEx Find & Replace task to update a few configuration files on my static website before uploading via AzureBlob File Copy task.
What I have currently works. However I have to use the full source path to the "wwwroot" folder in order to for the correct files to be uploaded.
My concern is that my builds may change the directory structure that gets dropped as a build artifact which will break my release tasks.
I've tried to use various wildcards for the source path such as:
**/wwwroot/*
*/*wwwroot/*
And many other variations to no avail.
I read in some of the docs that wildcards won't work for directory paths in this task but was hoping there was a way to work around this as I have long term concerns about the path changing over time. I looked at a few other tasks in the marketplace but nothing seems to fit the bill and I couldn't find any definitive guidance on the matter. Any suggestions?
1.You can use $(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)/**/wwwroot/*.*(or .json,.xml...) in Source input.
(If the wwwroot folder doesn't have subfolders and all files within that folder can match format *.*)
2.Otherwise I suggest you archive the wwwroot folder first before uploading it:
Use $(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory) to get working directory and then use full path(not recommend using * here) to archive the specific wwwroot folder. Then upload the zipped folder which contains all content of your wwwroot folder.

Explore file system on hosted agent

I have an Azure DevOps build that fails with an error that no files are found in a particular folder. If this build had run on-prem I would logon to the build server and explore the files and folder structure created by the build, in order to figure out what went wrong.
Is there a way to explore the build folder structure for a hosted agent?
The Work folder is the root for all of your Pipeline tasks whether it be artifact staging, repo, copy-files etc.
Run an in-line Powershell step with the following commands:
Set-Location $env:AGENT_WORKFOLDER
Get-ChildItem -Recurse
Check out this link for some other common locations. Just search for c:\agent_work for all of the predefined variables that contain your files.
You can add a PowerShell/Command Line task that go the agent folder and check the folders:
# Go to 's' folder in the agent - D:\a\1\s
cd "$(Build.SourcesDirectory)"
dir
If you need deeper level you can add it of course:
cd "$(Build.SourcesDirectory)/Test/Etc"
dir
You can run the build, check the folders and if it's not enough then add more paths to check.
Or like jesse said in the comment, you can run dir /b /s to get all :)

Dynamic Bin folders hard to copy bin folder to artifact location Azure DevOps

I have a problem with my CI in Azure DevOps.
I need to have a generic PowerShell script run in each CI that copy files from the bin folder and put them to artifact(a) folder with each project folder name.
But bin path are dynamic e.g.
$projectBinDirectory\bin\release\net471\win-x64
$projectBinDirectory\bin\release\net471
$projectBinDirectory\bin\Release\netcoreapp2.1\win-x64
$projectBinDirectory\bin\Release\netcoreapp2.2\win-x64
$projectBinDirectory\bin\Release\netcoreapp2.1
in the future, if someone creates netcore 2.2 or something else how to configure publish path dynamically as I want to copy main project files
e.g.
copy from
bin\release\netcoreapp2.1\win-x64 all project *.dlls,*configs etc files
to
artifact\Projectname\ all project files
the issue
cannot figure out after bin\release\ path to reach to project files
I need to figure out what is the path dynamically after bin\release...\projectFiles
this argument fixed my issue
-c Release -o ./bin/$(BuildConfiguration)/publishNew:

VSTS Online Portal: Un-Nesting Build Folders on Release

I'm trying to set up automatic build + deploy for a rather large solution. The single solution produces 2 zip folders in the "$(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)" location, and these contain all the right files. For the purposes of testing/troubleshooting I am only looking at one of these zip files, but eventually both sites will have to be deployed this way.
However, to get to the actual files, you have to pass through 14 unnecessary subfolders. To further complicate matters, about 8 of these are variable, based on certain elements of the build configuration (some are due to folder structure in the git repo).
I don't want any of these subfolders. The other problem is that I don't actually want a 100% flat file; I need 2 folders with subfolders to be contained within the finally-extracted directory. (The final directory is a physical path for an IIS site.) Is there any way to do this?
I have tried:
Taking the generated zip file, extracting it to a temp directory, and repackaging it, all on the build machine.
To get this to work, I had to manually specify the 14 subdirectories. Also, I was unable to use "Publish Artifact" to upload the resulting zip to VSTS, so I'm not sure how to get it onto the server box.
Downloading the published zip file from VSTS, extracting it locally on the release machine, and then copying the contents to the correct directory.
This works only when I manually specify the 14 folders contained in the directory. I made an attempt to hide the 14 folders with wildcards but only succeeded in copying the excessive nesting structure - I'm guessing the "Source Folder" parameter doesn't support wildcards (I had to actually do it in the "Contents" section or the task failed).
Using the "Flatten Folders" advanced option in the copy dialog.
This removes ALL folder structure, which is not what I want. I need to end up with 2 folders containing subfolders in the final directory.
If it's not possible to only partially flatten the zip generated by the build step, I'd appreciate some help figuring out how much of this terribly convoluted path I can pull out using variables.
There is a very simple way to move the contents of only the contents and subdirectories the PackageTmp folder to the build artifacts folder while shedding the unnecessary folder structure above it, and without using the "Flatten Folders" option (since you likely want to keep the folder structure under PackageTmp intact):
First, in your Build Solution task, set the MS Build Arguments similar to the following:
/p:DeployOnBuild=true /p:WebPublishMethod=Package /p:PackageAsSingleFile=false /p:SkipInvalidConfigurations=true /p:PackageLocation="$(build.binariesdirectory)"
Notice that /p:PackageAsSingleFile=false is set to false; you don't want to zip the package up just yet. Also note the setting /p:PackageLocation="$(build.binariesdirectory). You don't want the output to go directly to the artifact staging directory, as is configured by default.
Next, add a Powershell task, and add this inline script:
$folder = Get-ChildItem -Directory -Path '.\*' -Include 'PackageTmp' -Recurse
Write-Host "##vso[task.setvariable variable=PathToPackageTmpFolder]$($folder.FullName)"
This will store the fully qualified path to the PackageTmp folder in a variable named PathToPackageTmpFolder. Under Advanced options, set the Working Directory to $(build.binariesdirectory)
Now add a Copy Files task to move only the contents of PackageTmp and its subfolders to the artifact staging directory. Set Source Folder to $(PathToPackageTmpFolder), Contents to **, and Target Folder to $(build.artifactstagingdirectory). You're all set!
That is the MSBuild deploy/publish to package action and the folder structure won’t be remain after deploying to the server.
You can specify /p:PackageTempRootDir="" msbuild argument to ignore the folder structure of project path.
Another way is that, you can publish project through FileSystem method, then archive files through Archive files task.