VSTS

My existing VSTS CI/CD process has a problem that the deployment of a VSTS extension, from the moment it is uploaded to when it’s tasks are available to a build agent, is not instantiation. The process can potentially take a few minutes to roll out. The problem this delay causes is a perfect candidate for using VSTS Release Gates; using the gate to make sure the expected version of a task is available to an agent before running the next stage of the CD pipeline e.g waiting after deploying a private build of an extension before trying to run functional tests. The problem is how to achieve this with the current VSTS gate options? ...

Background Having automated builds is essential to any good development process. Irrespective of the build engine in use, VSTS, Jenkins etc. you need to have a means to create the VMs that are running the builds. You can of course do this by hand, but in many ways you are just extending the old ‘it works on my PC – the developer can build it only on their own PC’ problem i.e. it is hard to be sure what version of tools are in use. This is made worse by the fact it is too tempting for someone to remote onto the build VM to update some SDK or tool without anyone else’s knowledge. ...

I wrote a post recently Versioning your ARM templates within a VSTS CI/CD pipeline. I realised since writing it that it does not address the issue of if you wish to version your ARM Templates using Semantic Versioning. My JSON versioning task I used did not support the option of not extracting a numeric version number e.g. 1.2.3.4 from a VSTS build number. To address this limitation I have modified my Version JSON file task to address. This change to my task allows it to be used with the GitVersion VSTS task to manage the semantic versioning. For more details on GitVersion see the project documentation. Hence, I my now able to generate a version number using GitVersion and pass this in to the versioning task directly using a build variable. ...

As part of the continued improvement to my CI/CD process I needed to provide a means so that whenever I test my Generate Release Notes Task, within it’s CI/CD process, new commits and work item associations are made. This is required because the task only picks up new commits and work items since the last successful running of a given build. So if the last release of the task extension was successful then the next set of tests have no associations to go in the release notes, not exactly exercising all the code paths! In the past I added this test data by hand, a new manual commit to the repo prior to a release; but why have a dog and bark yourself? Better to automate the process. This can done using a PowerShell file, run inline or stored in the builds source repo and run within a VSTS build. The code is shown below, you can pass in the required parameters, but I set sensible default for my purposes ...

Whist adding a couple of new tasks to my VSTS Manifest Versioning Extension I hit the problem that VSIX package became too big to upload to the Marketplace. The error I saw in my CI/CD VSTS pipeline was``` ##vso[task.logissue type=error;]error: Failed Request: Bad Request(400) - The extension package size ‘23255292 bytes’ exceeds the maximum package size ‘20971520 bytes’ 1. They get a list of files 2. Extract a version number from the build number 3. Then apply this to one or more files in a product/task specific manner there has been some cut and paste coding. This means that I have NPM modules in the tasks **package.json** file that were not needed for a given task. I could manually address this but there is an NPM module to help, DepCheck. First install the [DepCheck](https://www.npmjs.com/package/depcheck) module``` npm install depcheck –g ```then run **depcheck** from the command line whist within your task’s folder. This returns a list of modules listed in the **package.json** that are not referenced in the code files. These can then be removed from the **package.json.** e.g. I saw``` Unused dependencies \* @types/node \* @types/q \* Buffer \* fs \* request \* tsd Unused devDependencies \* @types/chai \* @types/mocha \* @types/node \* mocha-junit-reporter \* ts-loader \* ts-node \* typings ```The important ones to focus on are the first block (non-development references), as these are the ones that are packaged with the production code in the VSIX; I was already pruning the **node\_module** folder of development dependencies prior to creating the VSIX to remove devDependancies using the command``` npm prune –production ```I did find some of the listed modules strange, as I knew they really were needed and a quick test of removing them did show the code failed if they were missing. These are what [depchecks documentation calls false alerts](https://www.npmjs.com/package/depcheck). I found I could remove the **@type/xxx** and **tsd** references, which were the big ones, that are only needed in development when working in TypeScript. Once these were removed for all four of my NodeJS based tasks my VSIX dropped in size from 22Mb to 7Mb. So problem solved.

In response to requests on the VSTS Marketplace I have added a pair of tasks to added/edit entries in a .JSON format files. The first is for adding a version to a file like a package.json file e.g. { "name": "myapp", "version": "1.0.0", "license": "MIT" } The second is designed for angular environment.ts file e.g. export const environment = { production: true, version: '1.0.0.0' }; But I bet people find other uses, they always do. ...

Background I have recently been posting on using Azure to host private VSTS build/release agents to avoid agent queue deadlocking issues with more complex release pipelines. One of the areas discussed is reducing cost of running a private agent in Azure by only running the private agent within a limited time range, when you guess it might be needed. I have done this using DevTest Labs Auto Start and Auto Stop features. This works, but is it not better to only start the agent VM when it is actually really needed, not when you guess it might be? I need this private agent only when working on my VSTS extensions, not something I do everyday. Why waste CPU cycles that are never used? ...

In my last post I discussed creating a private VSTS build agent within an Azure DevTest Lab on a VM with no GUI. It was pointed out to me today, by Rik Hepworth, that I had overlooked an obvious alternative way to get the VSTS agent onto the VM i.e. not having to use a series of commands at an RDP connected command prompt. The alternative I missed is to use a DevTest Lab Artifact; in fact there is such an artifact available within the standard set in DevTest Labs. You just provide a few parameters and you are good to go. Well you should be good to go, but there is an issue. The PowerShell used to extract the downloaded Build Agent ZIP file does not work on a non-UI based Windows VM. The basic issue here is discussed in this post by my fellow ALM MVP Ricci Gian Maria. Luckily the fix is simple; I just used the same code to do the extraction of the ZIP file that I used in my previous post. I have submitted this fix as a Pull Request to the DevTest Lab Team so hopefully the standard repository will have the fix soon and you won’t need to do a fork to create a private artifacts repo as I have. Update 1st December 2017 The Pull Request to the DevTest Lab Team with the fixed code has been accepted and the fix is now in the master branch of the public artifact repo, so automatically available to all ...

Updates 28th Nov 2017: Also see this second post Creating a VSTS build agent on an Azure DevLabs Windows Server VM with no GUI - Using Artifacts 30th Nov 2017: Also see associated post Announcing a new VSTS Extension for Starting and Stopping Azure DevTest Labs VMs As I posted recently I have been trying to add more functional tests to the VSTS based release CI/CD pipeline for my VSTS Extensions, and as I noted depending on how you want to run your tests e.g. trigger sub-builds, you can end up with scheduling deadlocks where a single build agent is scheduling the release and trying to run a new build. The answer is to use a second build agent in a different agent pool e.g. if the release is running on the Hosted build agent use a private build agent for the sub-build, or of course just pay for more hosted build instances. The problem with a private build agent is where to run it. As my extensions are a personal project I don’t have a corporate Hyper-V server to run any extra private agents on, as I would have for an company projects. My MVP MSDN Azure benefits are the obvious answer, but I want any agents to be cheap to run, so I don’t burn through all my MSDN credits for a single build agent. To this end I created a Windows Server 2016 VM in DevLabs (I prefer to create my VMs in DevLabs as it makes it easier tidying up of my Azure account) using an A0 sizing VM. This is tiny so cheap; I don’t intend to ever do a build on this agent, just schedule releases, so need to install few if any tools, so the size should not be an issue. To further reduce costs I used the auto start and stop features on the VM so it is only running during the hours I might be working. So I get an admittedly slow and limited private build agent but for less that $10 a month. As the VM is small it makes sense to not run a GUI. This means when you RDP to the new VM you just get a command prompt. So how do you get the agent onto the VM and setup? You can’t just open a browser to VSTS or cut and paste a file via RDP, and I wanted to avoid the complexity of having to open up PowerShell remoting on the VM. The process I used was as follows: ...

Reporting has always been important for software development, simply put the ability to know what has been done, and what remains to be done. For many teams the out the box reporting within TFS/VSTS dashboards has been enough e.g. sprint burndowns and kanban charts etc. Also TFS has always had SQL Reporting Services (SSRS) to provide rich reporting on a whole host of areas; though in my experience few clients use the out the box reports or customise their own reports. The lack of SSRS based reporting on VSTS has been a blocking limitation for some clients, preventing their move to VSTS. Also irrespective of peoples past use of custom reports, most people would like an easier way, than SSRS, to produce custom reports and charts. So enter VSTS Analytics Microsoft’s new free reporting option for VSTS that provide a host of reporting options for dashboards, Power BI and OData. For a great introduction have a look at Gregg Boer’s Channel9 video Visual Studio Team Services Reporting: Dashboards, Power BI, and OData ...