I am using TFS2015 Release Management and Powershell DSC to manage the deployment of applications - previously I was using RM2013.
One thing I have noticed is that in RM2013, in my Powershell DSC scripts I was able to access variables such as $applicationPath - which was populated with the TFS Build Drop location, for use in the DSC scripts and MOF creation.
In RM2015 it doesn't appear that this works? I have tried using the variables listed here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/Library/vs/alm/Build/scripts/variables
However none of these ever seem to be populated?
Is there actually a way of using these RM2015 system & build variables from within a PS DSC script now?
Kind regards
Try to use the corresponding generated environment variables (for example $env:Build.DefinitionName).
If it not work try more ways such as $env:Build_DefinitionName or $(Build.BuildNumber) and $(Build_BuildNumber)
Just as the relevant documentation mentioned:
Any text input can reference a variable by using the $(variable_name)
syntax and will be substituted with the actual value at run-time. All
variables are also exported to the environment as upppercase and any .
are replaced with _. In scripts you can reference variables via the
environment, i.e. %VARIABLE_NAME%, $VARIABLE_NAME, $env:VARIABLE_NAME,
depeding on the operating system.
Related
In an Azure Devops Build pipeline, I'm setting an environment variable in Powershell, like below:
And i know the variable works in another powershell task, because of this test:
But I'm not able to actually use this in another, non-powershell task. See this docker build/push task where i'm trying to add a tag. I get an error saying that it can't find that variable. Is my notation wrong somehow? I've tried multiple different variations on the screen shot below, but none have worked.
The notation $env:LOCALTAG is powershell specific. I think you should use the macro syntax $(LOCALTAG) (without $env)
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/process/variables?view=azure-devops&tabs=yaml%2Cbatch#macro-syntax-variables.
I have issues with accessing build variables from powershell script for example I want to access Agent.BuildDirectory.
I tried:
$Build.SourcesDirectory
$(Build.SourcesDirectory)
none works.
I know that I can use $Env:TF_BUILD_SOURCESDIRECTORY but not all variables are available this way.
Do you have any suggestions ?
So this is TFS 2017 Update 3. You should be able to do what you are trying to do. Where are you trying to use the variables, as parameter in the build or actually inside a PowerShell script? Those variable can be used as parameters and will be substituted at run time by the agent and passed to scripts, but if you are trying to access them inside a script like $(...) it will not work. You do need to use $env:VARIABLE. All variables in the variables section get converted to environment variables with their name at runtime. So for example if you are running an inline PowerShell like the image bellow, you can use $(..)
or if you want to pass parameters to the a PowerShell script you can also.
But from inside a script you cannot.
You should use $(Agent.BuildDirectory) not $(Agent.SourcesDirectory). Check Agent variables from the link below:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/build/variables?view=azure-devops&tabs=yaml#agent-variables
Update:
Adding a screenshot:
I'm interested in using a script task to override one of these Bamboo plan variables for subsequent tasks but I'm not sure if it's possible or how to go about doing so. It appears that Bamboo allows for various levels of variable overrides for Build Plans all the way down to particular branches however they all seem to require defining the values within the Bamboo UI. The problem with this is that it requires admin privileges to modify these variables whereas some of them need to be modified by developers that do not have this level of access. As a solution I want to be able to specify some variable overrides in files that exist in the source repository itself.
Attempt 1: Overriding environment variables
I've attempted to set the environment variables exposed by Bamboo using a Powershell script and specifying something like $env:bamboo_xyz = 'ABC' but it doesn't seem to have an effect past the task context in which it was specified in. Presumably Bamboo must be re-setting the environment variables individually for each task or executing them within their own contexts but it's not clear to me exactly from the documentation.
UPDATE: It appears from some testing that environment variables set in one Script task are not available in subsequent Script tasks in the same Job. This leaves me with no apparent way to override variables based on anything other than hard coded values in Bamboo.
Attempt 2: Using the Bamboo Inject Variables Plugin task
I've tried using the Bamboo Inject Variables Plugin task to override variables but because what appears to be a required namespace parameter it only seems to be able to define new variables and not override existing ones.
Enviroment variables are only valid in the current session. So if bamboo starts one script ( one powershell session ) completes that and then start a new powershell script ( New Session ) the enviroment variable will not be kept.
So then there are a few options, set the variable in each script.
Or set it using registry at the start of the process. And if ncessary set it back to default value in the last step/script.
I've been looking everywhere to see which is the environment variable for the MSBuildExtensionsPath that I have in my TFS project file. How do I access this environment variable in PowerShell?
EDIT:
Out of the ones listed here, I am not sure which one I use.
The way you access env vars in PowerShell is:
$env:TF_BUILD_BINARIESDIRECTORY
That said, I don't see via your link an env var that corresponds to the MSBuild built-in variable MSBuildExtensionsPath. Why don't you pass that variable value into your PowerShell script as a parameter?
I'm trying to set up a new build configuration in TeamCity using the Powershell runner. However, I can't seem to find a way to access the TeamCity System Properties in the build script. I've seen hints that it is possible, but cannot find documentation on how to do it.
I have tried accessing the system properties using Powershell variable syntax, $variable. I have also printed out all variables in memory and see no teamcity variables to use.
Is this possible with the Powershell runner, and if so what is the syntax necessary to get it working?
TeamCity will set up environment variables, such as build.number (you can see a list of these within TeamCity).
In Powershell you can access environment variables using the env "provider", e.g.
$env:PATH
TeamCity variables are accessible by replacing the . with a _, so the build.number variable can be accessed as
$env:build_number
As it says in the TeamCity documentation, the system parameters are passed to the build script runner, but not all build script runners know what to do with them. In the case of the Powershell script runner, when using a script file, they don't propagate down to your scripts.
It's occurred to me to write a psake-optimized build runner that does, but in the meantime you can do one of the following:
explicitly map any of the TeamCity build properties to script parameters using the parameter expansion that's available within the Script Source box. eg .\build.ps1 -someParam:%build.name%
use environment parameters, which can be accessed explicitly within PowerShell using $env:NAME_IN_TEAMCITY syntax, eg $env:TEAMCITY_VERSION, or looped over and pushed into variable scope
access the build properties file that TeamCity makes available during the build. The file is available at $env:TEAMCITY_BUILD_PROPERTIES_FILE, and if you load the XML version it's fairly easy to loop through and push them all into scope (though you do get everything as a string of course). I posted a gist on how to do this (https://gist.github.com/piers7/6432985). Or, if using Psake, modify the script above to return you a hashtable which you can pass directly to Psake's -properties argument.
It is posible. Here is example how to pass system properties into PSake script:
& .\psake.ps1 -parameters #{build_number=%build.number%; personal_build=%build.is.personal%}
If you don't use Psake, you can define your variables like this:
$build_number = %build.number%
The %build.number% part will be replaced with TeamCity provided data. I think, it works only in Source code script input mode.
I created a meta-runner that will pass through System parameters to parameters declared in the Powershell script. It's not perfect (if you put '# in your source it will break) but it works for what I needed, you can find it here: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/ef60ada3f48f0fb25093