Downloading Artifacts Locally from VSTS - azure-devops

I have successfully created a Build definition in VSTS for some SharePoint client side projects that I'm working on. I tried creating a Release definition but I can't seem to find any way for me to copy/download the artifacts created from my build definition locally. I may be missing something since I'm still quite new with VSTS but I can't seem to figure it out.

To downbload build artifacts from release when build successful, you can specify the release definition as below:
Add the build artifacts with latest version in release definition.
Enable Continuous deployment trigger for the artifacts.
Select the private agent which you want to download on the local machine.
Now when a build succeed, a new release will be triggered to download the latest build artifacts.

Related

Where is the location of Release Artifacts on TFS/Azure DevOps

Can anybody tell me where the Release Artifact comes from when you use it in a Release Definition?
I’m currently using TFS on-prem (v15 Update 1) to handle undertake Build & Release. I believe this version is very close to what the current Azure DevOps documentation describes as ‘Classic’.
I have a Build Definition that outputs an Artifact to the default local path on the agent (c:\agent_work\1\a) using the Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory. I also publish/copy the artifact to a network share.
I have a Release Definition which references the Build Definition as a Linked Artifact Source. Therefore, when I create a new release where does the Release Definition get the Artifact Does it get it from my published network share? Does it get it from Source Control? How do I know it’s getting it from TFS or Network Share?
I know the Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory gets deleted on every build, so I know it can’t be from that location.
You tied your release definition to a build definition. Build definitions can publish artifacts when they run.
Your release definition looks at a build run, looks at the artifacts it published, and then retrieves them from whatever location to which they were published. This can be a file share, or it can be within the TFS/Azure DevOps instance itself. Not source control or Azure Artifacts, but rather a completely internal store just for builds.
Now to directly answer your question:
How do you know where the artifact came from? By looking at the build run. How do you know where the artifacts are going to be published in the future? By looking at the build definition.

How to download multiple build artifacts in a Release pipeline on Azure Devops?

I am trying to create a Releasing stage that is meant to download 3 different build artifacts from 3 different pipelines in a project and deploy them on a target machine. When I create a release and deploy it on the target machine, the very first download build artifact task works fine but none of the following ones and I see the following error
"Artifact [buildnumber] not found for build [buildId]. Please ensure you have published artifacts in any previous phases of the current build."
Has anyone else seen this error or know why I am getting this error?
Thank
If you want to use Download Build Artifacts task to download different build artifacts from different pipelines, please select the “Specific build” option to find that particular artifact, as below.
If you use the default value: Current build, of course this task cannot find other build artifacts from other build pipelines. And then you will encounter this issue.
In addition, the new release will automatically download artifacts in below pre-defined “Download Artifacts” step.
Therefore, you could just add these 3 artifacts in release pipeline, and then you don’t need to use additional Download Build Artifacts task to download these artifacts. See: Release artifacts and artifact sources for details.

Automated build pipeline Salesforce Azure DevOps

I am trying an automated build process in Azure DevOps for Salesforce. whenever a change is pushed to the repository, my build is triggered and it is working fine and pushing the changes to the related sandbox. Here is the proof for the same
Success Build Process.
The configuration of the build is Build configuration.
The build is working fine as expected. I now want to create a release which will push this change to a different environment, and I don't want this to be automated, hence the option of creating the release. The build path to the ant file in my release is exactly as it should be but I am getting this error. Release Error.
The release configuration is Release configuration
My Repository folder structure is: Folder structure. and my build.xml is within the deploy folder.
I don't know what I am doing wrong but the release is always failing and giving me the error which says:
Error: Not found antBuildFile: D:\a\r1\a\deploy\build.xml
Not found antBuildFile: D:\a\r1\a\deploy\build.xml
Based on the first image (Success Build Process), seems that you already have deployed your changes on that sandbox. Working with metadata deployment in Salesforce is different from java and .net, keep in mind that you already have the "executables", all those XML are already the code that you will change on the environment.
The second point is that on release you are in another agent, Buil and Release pipelines runs have their own lifecycle, so the code existing at the Build pipeline is not available until you send it on "drop" artifact, see Publish Build Artifacts task documentation. So that use copy task to put build.xml on publish folder, then you'll be able to use it on Release pipeline.
When you are executing ant go the /deploy folder and execute your command or check for your ant version using ant -version command.

how to exclude test projects from continuous deployment

I have a build definition in VSTS and I want the unit test projects to be run as part of the build, do I then need to include those dlls in the deployment to the Azure web app? surely they are no longer needed after the build.
No matter you are going to use Release or not, you could only copy the files that you need and publish them:
If you are going to use TFS Release to deploy, then in Release definition, you can just select the build artifact. If you want to deploy in build definition, you can add deploy task after Copy files and deploy from the target folder in Copy files task.

Release definition to publish nuget packages for multiple artifacts

I have a VSTS release definition that I want to use for publishing nuget packages for multiple artifacts. The artifacts for the different nuget packages are supplied to the release definition from different build definitions. Only artifacts from the build that triggered the release shall be downloaded and published. The pipeline is setup according to the picture below.
That is, when a build triggers a new release, only artifacts from that build should be published in the release. All artifacts from the other build definitions should be ignored since the version number on those nuget packages are not updated and will fail to push.
Can this be accomplished?
Take a look at this link https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/vsts/release-notes/2018/mar-05-vsts#improve-release-times-by-partially-downloading-artifacts
And then on that same link see Deploy selectively based on the artifact triggering a release
It will basically explain VSTS new features. The first one is to specify what you want to download on a release phase. The second one is to add a custom condition on a phase to define if it should be executed.
So you could create two phases, one for each of your artifacts. Each phase would only download the corresponding artifact and only run if the custom conditional evaluates true, using the new release variable Release.TriggeringArtifact.Alias.
Note that this release variable is only present if the release is continuous deployment.