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Publish and download Universal Packages in Azure Pipelines

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Azure DevOps Services

Using Universal Packages you can pack any number of files of any type and share it with your team. Using the Universal Package task, you can pack, publish, and download packages of various sizes up to 4 TB. Each package will be uniquely identified with a name and a version number. Packages can be published and consumed to and from Artifacts feeds by using the Azure CLI or Azure Pipelines.

Note

Universal Packages are only available in Azure DevOps Services.

Prepare a Universal Package

By default, the Universal Packages task uses the $(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory) as the publish directory. To prepare your Universal Package for publishing, place the files you want to publish in that directory. You can also use the Copy Files utility task to copy those files to the publish directory.

Publish a Universal Package

To publish a Universal Package to your Artifacts feed, add the following task to your pipeline's yaml file.

# Publish a Universal Package
- task: UniversalPackages@0
  displayName: Universal Publish
  inputs:
    command: publish
    publishDirectory: '$(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)'
    vstsFeedPublish: '<projectName>/<feedName>'
    vstsFeedPackagePublish: '<Package name>'
    packagePublishDescription: '<Package description>'
Argument Description
publishDirectory Location of the files to be published.
vstsFeedPublish The project and feed name to publish to.
vstsFeedPackagePublish The package name. Must be lower case. Use only letters, numbers, and dashes.
packagePublishDescription Description of the content of the package.

To publish packages to an Azure Artifacts feed from your pipeline, you must add the Project Collection Build Service identity as a Contributor from the feed's settings. See Adding users/groups permissions to a feed for details.

To publish to an external feed, you must first create a service connection to point to that feed. see Manage service connection for details.

Package versioning

Universal Packages follow the semantic versioning spec and are identified by their names and version numbers. Semantic version numbers have three numeric components, Major, Minor, and Patch: Major.Minor.Patch.

When you release a new backward-compatible feature, you increment the minor version and reset the patch version to 0 (1.4.17 to 1.5.0), and when you make a backward-incompatible change, you increment the major version and reset the minor and patch versions to 0 (2.6.5 to 3.0.0). The patch version number should be incremented in the case of fixing a bug (1.0.0 to 1.0.1).

The Universal Packages task automatically selects the next major, minor, or patch version for you when you publish a new package.

To enable versioning for your package, add a versionOption input to your YAML file. The options for publishing a new package version are: major, minor, patch, or custom.

Selecting custom enables you to manually specify your package version. The other options will get the latest package version from your feed and increment the chosen version segment by 1. So if you have a testPackage 1.0.0, and select the major option, your new package will be testPackage 2.0.0. If you select the minor option, your package version will be 1.1.0, and if you select the patch option, your package version will be 1.0.1.

One thing to keep in mind is that if you select the custom option, you must also provide a versionPublish as follows.

- task: UniversalPackages@0
  displayName: Universal Publish
  inputs:
    command: publish
    publishDirectory: '$(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)'
    vstsFeedPublish: '<projectName>/<feedName>'
    vstsFeedPackagePublish: '<Package name>'
    versionOption: custom
    versionPublish: '<Package version>'
    packagePublishDescription: '<Package description>'
Argument Description
publishDirectory Location of the files to be published.
vstsFeedPublish The project and feed name to publish to.
vstsFeedPackagePublish The package name.
versionOption Select a version increment strategy. Options: major, minor, patch, custom
versionPublish The custom package version
packagePublishDescription Description of the content of the package.

Download a Universal Package

To download a Universal Package from a feed in your organization, use the Universal package task with the download command input as follows:

steps:
- task: UniversalPackages@0
  displayName: 'Universal download'
  inputs:
    command: download
    vstsFeed: '<projectName>/<feedName>'
    vstsFeedPackage: '<packageName>'
    vstsPackageVersion: '<packageVersion>'
    downloadDirectory: '$(Build.SourcesDirectory)\someFolder'
Argument Description
vstsFeed The Artifacts feed hosting the package to be downloaded.
vstsFeedPackage Name of the package to be downloaded.
vstsPackageVersion Version of the package to be downloaded.
downloadDirectory The package destination folder. Default value: $(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory).

To download a Universal Package from an external source, use the following snippet:

steps:
- task: UniversalPackages@0
  displayName: 'Universal download'
  inputs:
    command: download
    feedsToUse: external
    externalFeedCredentials: MSENG2
    feedDownloadExternal: 'fabrikamFeedExternal'
    packageDownloadExternal: 'fabrikam-package'
    versionDownloadExternal: 1.0.0
Argument Description
feedsToUse Set the value to external when downloading from an external source.
externalFeedCredentials Name of the service connection pointing to the external feed. See service connections for details.
feedDownloadExternal Name of the external feed.
packageDownloadExternal The package name to be downloaded.
versionDownloadExternal The version of the package to be downloaded.

Note

You can use wildcards in the string you pass to the download command to download the latest version of a Universal Package. See Universal Packages quickstart for more details.

Next Steps