Building Visual Studio projects with DevEnv.com

Mario Majcica May 30, 2019 2 Comments

Introduction

This post is about my most successful Azure DevOps extension. Before I tell you more about the newest version, let me tell you something more about the history of it.

Several years ago, just after the TFS 2015 was released, this was one of the first build tasks I built. I had a team who demanded it as not all of the projects they were running were based on MSBuild. Also, the necessary script to perform this action was quite simple, thus, a great practice ground to start writing a custom build task (I emphasise build as the release was back then not there yet).
It turned out to be very useful, however, considering its simplicity, I never thought it may be of interest to others. It was until I wrote and published the Deploy SSIS extension that I realized that may be handy to publish this task as an extension. It is not that I suddenly changed my mind, it just made sense to describe the whole process of building and deploying SSIS projects in a blog post and I missed a building part. It turns out I was wrong a big time as this is the most used extension I wrote with over a thousand downloads from the Azure DevOps Marketplace.

What’s new in version 2

My initial implementation stayed untouched for quite some time. In the end, it is a simple task that just worked. However, some users made me notice an obvious flaw. In the project was set to be built, all of the projects in the containing solution would be built. Strangely enough the same is stated in the help page of the tool itself, it just that I never noticed it.

The first argument for devenv is usually a solution file or project file.
You can also use any other file as the first argument if you want to have the
file open automatically in an editor. When you enter a project file, the IDE
looks for an .sln file with the same base name as the project file in the
parent directory for the project file. If no such .sln file exists, then the
IDE looks for a single .sln file that references the project. If no such single
.sln file exists, then the IDE creates an unsaved solution with a default .sln
file name that has the same base name as the project file.

I address this issue by adding a separate filed for the solution and for the project. As this is a breaking change for the existing users, I published a new major version of the task.
Some minor improvements are also now included in the new version.
The first issue ever to be reported was actually a feature request. It was asked if the search for the solution file can be performed so that the wildcards can be used as parameters for the solution input field. This is now addressed.
Also, all of the dependency libraries are now updated to the latest available version. These are ‘Task Library’ which is now v0.11.0 and ‘VSSetup library’ that was boosted to v2.2.5. This also bring some changes to the retrieval of the path of the DevEnv come to accommodate the newly added Visual Studio 2019 option.

What’s next

Although the task is focusing on windows tooling and needs windows only tooling to be present on the build agent, the PowerShell implementation is somewhere limiting. The next step will be rewriting the task in TypeScript. Not a huge added value, however, it is making this extension easier to maintain in the future.

Truly my hopes are in Microsoft basing all of their projects on MSBuild (as they recently did for SSRS projects) and making this extension obsolete. However, for time being, this is one of the puzzle pieces, that could help you in automating your MS BI pipelines.

Starting a TFS release via REST API

Mario Majcica May 10, 2019 1 Comments

Intro

It is a common need to inject variables in your release. When it comes to a build, it was always an easy task, however, the release didn’t support such a thing out of the box. In case you are using Azure DevOps (service and server), you are good to go, as this is now possible after you do mark a variable as ‘Settable at the release time’. But what about those who are stuck to previous versions of TFS? Well, there are some tricks that I’ll illustrate in this post.

Leveraging Draft release

There are two ways of achieving our goal. The first one is to create a new release and do not trigger the deployment in the environments that are set to deploy on the release creation, set the variables then trigger the deployments. This is a more laborious and complicated way. Second method is to create a draft release, then populate the draft with the necessary variables and then start the release. I’ll show you the necessary steps to achieve this via the REST API which you can try for free. 
In the upcoming cmdlets I’ll focus on achieving a goal, which is to create a draft release, add a variable and start the release. So if you find code not really reusable or not framework like, please consider that was out of my goal and it would take way more effort to write.
First of all I need a couple of helper functions that I will use in order to authenticate and get the right release id based on the release name.

$pat = '6yhymn3foxuqmsobktekvukeffhqifjt4yeldfj33v6wk4kr4idq'
$url = "https://myTest.tfs.local/tfs/DefaultCollection"
$project = "MarioTest"

function Get-PatHeader {
    [CmdletBinding()]
    param
    (
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [string]$Pat
    )
    BEGIN { }
    PROCESS {
        $encodedCredentials = [System.Convert]::ToBase64String([System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetBytes(":$pat"))
        $header = @{ }
        $header.Authorization = "Basic $encodedCredentials"

        return $header
    }
    END { }
}

function Get-ReleaseDefinitionId {
    [CmdletBinding()]
    param
    (
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [string]$CollectionUrl,
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [string]$Project,
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [string]$Name,
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [string]$Pat
    )
    BEGIN { }
    PROCESS {
        $headers = Get-PatHeader $Pat
        $reponse = Invoke-RestMethod "$CollectionUrl/$Project/_apis/release/definitions?searchText=$Name" -Headers $headers

        return $reponse.value.id
    }
    END { }
}

$releaseDefinitionId = Get-ReleaseDefinitionId $url $project "Test1" $pat

The above is to get the necessary authentication header and resolve the Release Definition name into the id that we are going to use across all of our other calls. As you can see, my release definition is called “Test1”.

Before we start a draft release, we need to collect some relevant information and that is information about the artifacts that we would like to use with the new release. Often this is a pain point for those with less experience with TFS. However, the following cmdlets should do the trick:

function Get-ReleaseArtifacts {
    [CmdletBinding()]
    param
    (
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [string]$CollectionUrl,
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [string]$Project,
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [int]$ReleaseDefinitionId,
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [string]$Pat
    )
    BEGIN { }
    PROCESS {
        $headers = Get-PatHeader $Pat
        $reponse = Invoke-RestMethod "$CollectionUrl/$Project/_apis/Release/artifacts/versions?releaseDefinitionId=$ReleaseDefinitionId" -Headers $headers

        return $reponse
    }
    END { }
}

function Get-DefaultReleaseArtifacts {
    [CmdletBinding()]
    param
    (
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] $ReleaseArtifacts
    )
    BEGIN { }
    PROCESS {
        $artifacts = @()

        foreach ($artifactVersion in $ReleaseArtifacts.artifactVersions) {
            $artifact = [PSCustomObject]@{ }

            $artifact | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name "alias" -Value $artifactVersion.alias
            $artifact | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name "instanceReference" -Value $artifactVersion.defaultVersion
        
            $artifacts += $artifact
        }

        return $artifacts
    }
    END { }
}

$releaseArtifacts = Get-ReleaseArtifacts $url $project $releaseDefinitionId $pat
$defaultArtifacts = Get-DefaultReleaseArtifacts $releaseArtifacts

As in the Web UI, you are asked to specify the version of artifacts to use for the release that you are creating. The same is asked by the REST API. The above cmdlets will allow you to retrieve the list of all the available artifacts and pick the last (default) one. You can see further examples here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/integrate/previous-apis/rm/releases?view=azure-devops-2019#create-a-release

In case you are interested in using non the latest artifacts, you can explore further the response and implement the necessary logic do provide the ones to use in the next stage.

Now it’s time to create our draft release. This is easily achieved with the following cmdlet.

function New-Release {
    [CmdletBinding()]
    param
    (
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [string]$CollectionUrl,
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [string]$Project,
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [string]$Pat,
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] $ReleaseArtifacts,
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [int]$ReleaseDefinitionId,
        [Parameter()] [string]$ReleaseDescription,
        [Parameter()] [bool]$IsDraft = $false,
        [Parameter()] [string[]]$ManualEnvironments
    )
    BEGIN { }
    PROCESS {
        $requestBody = @{ }
        $requestBody.definitionId = $ReleaseDefinitionId
        $requestBody.isDraft = $IsDraft
        $requestBody.description = $ReleaseDescription
        $requestBody.reason = "manual"
        $requestBody.manualEnvironments = $ManualEnvironments
        $requestBody.artifacts = $ReleaseArtifacts
        
        $headers = Get-PatHeader $Pat
        $body = $requestBody | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 10
        $body = [System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetBytes($body);

        return Invoke-RestMethod "$CollectionUrl/$Project/_apis/release/releases?api-version=4.1-preview.6" -Method Post -Headers $headers -Body $body -ContentType "application/json"
    }
    END { }
}

$release = New-Release $url $project $pat $defaultArtifacts $releaseDefinitionId "desc" $true

As you can notice, with the above script, you can start not only a draft release, but also an ‘ordinary’ one.

At this point we are ready to set our variables. I’ll set both, one on the release level, another one on the environment scope, then update the release.

function Add-ReleaseVariable {
    [CmdletBinding()]
    param
    (
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [object]$ReleaseVariables,
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [string]$VariableName,
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [string]$VariableValue
    )
    BEGIN { }
    PROCESS {
        $value = [PSCustomObject]@{ value = $VariableValue }
        $ReleaseVariables | Add-Member -Name $VariableName -MemberType NoteProperty -Value $value -Force

        return $ReleaseVariables
    }
    END { }
}

$release.variables = Add-ReleaseVariable $release.variables "var1" "value"
$release.environments[0].variables = Add-ReleaseVariable $release.environments[0].variables "MarioInDraftEnv" "value1"

The above cmdlets will make things easier. In case the variable is already declared, the value will be overwritten with the one that you set at this stage. You can also see that I’m setting a variable on a release level and on an environment level. Environments are set to be an array, so to find out the desired one by name, you’ll need to search for it first. In this example, I’m just setting it on the first (and in my demo case, only) environment in the list. As mentioned earlier, last but not least, we will update the release.

function Update-Release {
    [CmdletBinding()]
    param
    (
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [string]$CollectionUrl,
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [string]$Project,
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [int]$ReleaseId,
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [object]$Release,
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [string]$Pat
    )
    BEGIN { }
    PROCESS {
        $headers = Get-PatHeader $Pat

        $body = $Release | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 10
        $body = [System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetBytes($body);

        $reponse = Invoke-RestMethod "$CollectionUrl/$Project/_apis/release/releases/$($ReleaseId)?api-version=4.1-preview.6" -Method Put -Body $body -ContentType 'application/json' -Headers $headers

        return $reponse
    }
    END { }
}

$release = Update-Release $url $project $release.id $release $pat

Unfortunately, we can’t update the variables and start the release in the same call. The above call will update the variables in that specific release (not in the release definition) and the following will start the release.

function Start-Release {
    [CmdletBinding()]
    param
    (
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [string]$CollectionUrl,
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [string]$Project,
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [int]$ReleaseId,
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [string]$Pat
    )
    BEGIN { }
    PROCESS {
        $patch = '{ "status": "active" }'

        $headers = Get-PatHeader $Pat
        $reponse = Invoke-RestMethod "$CollectionUrl/$Project/_apis/release/releases/$($ReleaseId)?api-version=4.1-preview.6" -Method Patch -Body $patch -ContentType 'application/json' -Headers $headers

        return $reponse
    }
    END { }
}

$release = Start-Release $url $project $release.id $pat

That’s it. We now started our release with variables that are injected into it.

Azure DevOps

As mentioned before, this is not necessary anymore in Azure DevOps, or to be more precise, since version 5.0 of the REST API. In case you are looking for an example on how to achieve the same with the Azure DevOps, the following script will do.

function New-Release {
    [CmdletBinding()]
    param
    (
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [string]$CollectionUrl,
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [string]$Project,
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [string]$Pat,
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] $ReleaseArtifacts,
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [int]$ReleaseDefinitionId,
        [Parameter()] $Variables,
        [Parameter()] [string]$ReleaseDescription,
        [Parameter()] [bool]$IsDraft = $false,
        [Parameter()] [string[]]$ManualEnvironments
    )
    BEGIN { }
    PROCESS {
        $requestBody = @{ }
        $requestBody.definitionId = $ReleaseDefinitionId
        $requestBody.isDraft = $IsDraft
        $requestBody.description = $ReleaseDescription
        $requestBody.reason = "manual"
        $requestBody.manualEnvironments = $ManualEnvironments
        $requestBody.artifacts = $ReleaseArtifacts
        $requestBody.variables = $Variables

        $headers = Get-PatHeader $Pat
        $body = $requestBody | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 10
        $body = [System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetBytes($body);

        return Invoke-RestMethod "$CollectionUrl/$Project/_apis/release/releases?api-version=5.0" -Method Post -Headers $headers -Body $body -ContentType "application/json"
    }
    END { }
}

$variables = [PSCustomObject]@{ }
$variables = Add-ReleaseVariable $variables "var2" "value"

$release = New-Release $url $project $pat $defaultArtifacts $releaseDefinitionId $variables "desc" $false

Important changes compared to the previous version of the cmdlet are to be found in the extra parameter called Variables and the URL api-version parameter now set to 5.0.

Be however aware that you need create the variables in your release definition and mark them as ‘Settable at the release time’.

In case your variable is not defined, your API call will fail with the following error:

“Variable(s) another do not exist in the release pipeline at scope: Release. New variables cannot be added while creating a release. Check the scope of the variable(s) or remove them and try again.”

Previously described technique will still work, even with the Azure DevOps if adding variables dynamically in the release is what you want. However, I would always advise you to define them, so that they are present and do not “materialize” from nowhere.

I hope I covered the necessary. Let me know in comments if any.

Node10 provider available for Agent v2.144.0

Mario Majcica December 4, 2018 0 Comments

It’s been a while that developers of Azure DevOps build/release tasks have been stuck on NodeJs v6.10.3 (available since agent v2.117.0). In the past days, a new pre-release of the agent came out that supports NodeJs 10 runtime. This is a great news but a bit ‘under-advertised’.

Let’s see what it is all about.

Starting with version v2.144.0 a new provider, called Node10 is supported. It is still a pre-release, but I’m confident that soon we will get a proper release with this new provider available.

To start using it, your task needs to reference it in the following way. In your task.json file just specify under the execution node, instead of probably just Node, Node10.

Example:

"execution": {
        "Node10": {
            "target": "task.js",
            "argumentFormat": ""
        }
    }

This means that in this case, your task implementation will run on NodeJs v10.13.0.
You are now free to use the Node 10 meanwhile if you are developing in TypeScript, then you can target ES2018 in this case. And if you are using TypeScript 3.2, some new features like BigInt may become available (by adding esnext.bigint to the lib setting in your compiler options).

Also do not forget to set in your task the “minimumAgentVersion” to:

"minimumAgentVersion": "2.144.0"

Cheers