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Task types & usage

TFS 2018

Note

Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2018 and earlier versions have the following differences in naming:

  • Pipelines for build and release are called definitions
  • Runs are called builds
  • Service connections are called service endpoints
  • Stages are called environments
  • Jobs are called phases

A task performs an action in a pipeline and is a packaged script or procedure that's abstracted with a set of inputs. Tasks are the building blocks for defining automation in a pipeline.

When you add a task to your pipeline, it might also add a set of demands to the pipeline. The demands define the prerequisites that must be installed on the agent for the task to run. When you run the build or deployment, an agent that meets these demands is chosen.

When you run a job, all the tasks are run in sequence, one after the other, on an agent. To run the same set of tasks in parallel on multiple agents, or to run some tasks without using an agent, see jobs.

To learn more about the general attributes supported by tasks, see the YAML Reference for steps.task.

Custom tasks

Azure DevOps includes built-in tasks to enable fundamental build and deployment scenarios. You also can create your own custom task.

In addition, Visual Studio Marketplace offers many extensions; each of which, when installed to your subscription or collection, extends the task catalog with one or more tasks. You can also write your own custom extensions to add tasks to Azure Pipelines.

Task versions

Tasks are versioned, and you must specify the major version of the task used in your pipeline. This can help to prevent issues when new versions of a task are released. Tasks are typically backwards compatible, but in some scenarios you may encounter unpredictable errors when a task is automatically updated.

When a new minor version is released (for example, 1.2 to 1.3), your pipeline automatically uses the new version. However, if a new major version is released (for example 2.0), your pipeline continues to use the major version you specified until you edit the pipeline and manually change to the new major version. The log will include an alert that a new major version is available.

You can set which minor version gets used by specifying the full version number of a task after the @ sign (example: GoTool@0.3.1). You can only use task versions that exist for your organization.

YAML pipelines aren't available in TFS.

Task control options

Each task offers you some Control Options.

YAML pipelines aren't available in TFS.

Environment variables

YAML pipelines are supported in Azure DevOps Server 2019 and higher.

Build tool installers (Azure Pipelines)

Tool installers enable your build pipeline to install and control your dependencies. Specifically, you can:

  • Install a tool or runtime on the fly (even on Microsoft-hosted agents) just in time for your CI build.

  • Validate your app or library against multiple versions of a dependency such as Node.js.

For example, you can set up your build pipeline to run and validate your app for multiple versions of Node.js.

Example: Test and validate your app on multiple versions of Node.js

YAML pipelines aren't available in TFS.

Tool installer tasks

For a list of our tool installer tasks, see Tool installer tasks.

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