Azure DevOps - Scrum Bug

Azure DevOps

Azure Devops

Recommendations for using Azure CLI in your workflow

Azure Pipelines

Recommendations for using Azure CLI in your workflow

Azure CLI is widely used in GitHub Actions and Azure Pipelines, as well as many other CI/CD tools. Over the last few weeks, I've been looking into its performance and security and based on that here are a number of recommendations.

Investigating az-cli performance on the hosted Azure Pipelines and GitHub Runners

GitHub Featured

Investigating az-cli performance on the hosted Azure Pipelines and GitHub Runners

I've been building a few more workflows and pipelines over the past few days and had been experimenting with the az-cli. And I've been running into all kinds of performance issues.

VSBuild task fails on self-hosted Azure Pipelines Agent

Azure Pipelines

VSBuild task fails on self-hosted Azure Pipelines Agent

Today I got this baffling error while trying to run one of the few pipelines I own that requires a self-hosted agent. 2023-09-18T13:24:55.1897667Z ##[section]Starting: VSBuild 2023-09-18T13:24:55.2042232Z ============================================================================== 2023-09-18T13:24:55.2042611Z Task : Visual Studio build 2023-09-18T13:24:55.2042705Z Description : Build with MSBuild and

Publish Azure DevOps Extensions using Azure Workload Identity

Azure DevOps Featured

Publish Azure DevOps Extensions using Azure Workload Identity

As you may know, I maintain several Azure DevOps Extensions. To publish them I use the Azure DevOps extension tasks. And to authenticate you must provide a Personal Access Token.

Hey! You broke our pipeline!

Azure Pipelines

Hey! You broke our pipeline!

One of the advantages of Azure Pipelines is that it automatically updates your tasks to the latest minor version. That way you don't have anything to stay up-to-date. But this also has disadvantages. Both Microsoft and Extension Authors can accidentally break your pipelines.

Enable RenovateBot for Azure Pipelines

GitHub Featured

Enable RenovateBot for Azure Pipelines

In my report on the Security state of the Azure DevOps Marketplace I came to the unfortunate conclusion that about 40% of the extensions contain vulnerabilities. One of the recommendations for both Azure DevOps administrators and pipeline authors was to keep the Azure Pipelines Tasks up-to-date.

Speeding up the Azure DevOps Extension tasks

Azure Pipelines

Speeding up the Azure DevOps Extension tasks

I've been maintaining and using the Azure DevOps Extension tasks for years now and I've always been frustrated by the slowness of some steps.

Cow walking through an Indian Marketplace

Azure DevOps Featured

Security state of the Azure DevOps Marketplace

This report focusses on the Azure Pipelines extensions in the Marketplace. At the time of compiling the report there are 1460 extensions in the "Azure Pipelines" category. More than 500 have one or more vulnerabilities or vulnerable dependencies.

Upgrade Hosted Agent / GitHub Runner PowerShell

Upgrade Hosted Agent / GitHub Runner PowerShell

I had recently fixed a bug in one of my build scripts by upgrading to the latest PowerShell Preview version. Of course, that version isn't yet available on the hosted agent for Azure Pipelines and GitHub Actions.

Azure DevOps 2020 and 2019 (and 2018) patch for log4j vulnerability

Azure DevOps Featured

Azure DevOps 2020 and 2019 (and 2018) patch for log4j vulnerability

Azure DevOps can be configured with advanced Code Search. That feature relies on Elastic Search. Depending on the age of your server, JVM version and Elastic Search version this may result in your setup being vulnerable to CVE-2021-44228.

Adding Visual Studio 2022 to Azure DevOps Server 2020

Visual Studio 2022

Adding Visual Studio 2022 to Azure DevOps Server 2020

Visual Studio 2022 is out! But Azure DevOps Server hasn't had a release to support it yet. This means that in Azure Pipelines it won't detect your freshly installed copy of Visual Studio 2022.

"Fixing" massive parallel builds on Azure Pipelines with TFVC

"Fixing" massive parallel builds on Azure Pipelines with TFVC

Last weekend I helped migrate a client from Team Foundation Server 2017 to Azure DevOps in the cloud. One of the many reasons to migrate was the ability to leverage the hosted pool to do builds and not having to maintain build servers.

A picture of a sanding block and a dust mask, tools that one uses when renovating.

Azure Pipelines

Renaming an Azure Pipeline task in an existing Azure DevOps extension

I have many Azure DevOps Extensions. Some recent, but also tasks dating back to 2015 when the extensibility model for build tasks forst appeared. Over time much has changed in Azure Pipeline Land...

Game Over - Insert Coin (Token) to continue

Accessing Azure DevOps APIs with large volumes of data

Most REST APIs exposed by Azure DevOps are limited in the amount of data they will return. You can choose to override the default number by passing a $top=### query string parameter. Azure DevOps will try to honor this request, but I've seen it refuse and return a lower number anyway.

Rename your master branch in Azure Repos

Rename your master branch in Azure Repos

Renaming your master branch in Azure Repos could be as simple as a few clicks. But if you have complex policies or permissions in place, it may be a little more work. To rename your master branch you have to create a new branch and then delete the old one:

Rename your master branch to something better

Rename your master branch to something better

I just went through my GitHub repositories to rid them of the master branches. It was a relatively simple process that took me about an hour or 2 for all my repositories. Scott Hanselman explains the base process. It's a simple set of steps to create a new branch with

Create an Organization level feed in Azure Artifacts

azure-artifacts

Create an Organization level feed in Azure Artifacts

A while ago the Azure DevOps team has removed the option to create "Organization level feeds" in Azure Artifacts. This move matches many previous efforts to isolate "projects" in Azure DevOps to make things less confusing and easier to migrate.

What to do when your build hangs on the Hosted Pool...

Azure Pipelines

What to do when your build hangs on the Hosted Pool...

When your build freezes and you can't remote into the agent... You're basically blinded...

Solving TFVC error TF14067 and Azure Pipelines

Azure Pipelines

Solving TFVC error TF14067 and Azure Pipelines

When this happens you'll see the following cryptic error message that mentions: A path you are absolutely certain exists; A workspace name that was created minutes before when the build agent initialized; TF14067.

Configuring standard policies for all repositories in Azure Repos

Configuring standard policies for all repositories in Azure Repos

By default you can only configure policies on specific branches in Azure Repos. If you're using a strict naming pattern for your branches (Release Flow or GitHub Flow), you may want to set a policy for all future Release Branches, or all Feature branches.

Setting default repository permissions on your Azure DevOps Organization

Setting default repository permissions on your Azure DevOps Organization

There is no UI to set the security at the Organization level. This is fine if you're happy with the default security settings in Azure DevOps, but if you want certain settings to apply to all projects, then it's sometimes useful to set the permissions at the Organization level.

Workspace management tips for TFVC

Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC)

Workspace management tips for TFVC

Workspaces are maybe the least understood feature in TFVC (Team Foundation Version Control). They're a great way to isolate different sets of files and changes from TFVC repositories.

Azure DevOps Extension Tasks 1.2.3x

Azure DevOps Extension Tasks 1.2.3x

It's been a while since I last blogged about the Azure DevOps Extension Tasks. Here are the things that have changed since the last update [https://jessehouwing.net/vsts-relnote-ci-cd-tools-for-vsts-extensions-1-1-75/]: * Added support for publishing Visual Studio extensions. * Support for versioning localized Azure Pipeline tasks * Support for executing under Node 10 * Fixed

Configure Visual Studio to use a different Git Credential Manager for Windows

Configure Visual Studio to use a different Git Credential Manager for Windows

Visual Studio ships with the Git credential Manager for Windows (GCMW) as part of its Team Explorer feature. This nifty little helper allows you to authenticate to Azure Repos among other git providers using your normal username and password and optional 2FA and it will handle the Personal Access Token

Connect any version of Visual Studio to Azure DevOps or Azure DevOps Server

Azure DevOps Featured

Connect any version of Visual Studio to Azure DevOps or Azure DevOps Server

Visual Studio has been around for a long time and there are still people developing in Visual Basic 6 or Visual Studio 2008. Even if you're using a more recent IDE, you could need one or more hotfixes and/or service packs.