Setting up a new instance of VSTS

• Account level settings
  • Region - Australia East
  • Timezone - GMT+10
  • Users (adding Frank)
  • Agent pools (adding 3 hosted VSTS agents)
  • Security (adding to Frank to Project Collection Administrators)
  • Billing (for adding VSTS agents which does the actual work)
  • Active Directory (created automatically)
• Project level settings
  • Adding a Azure ARM service endpoint (for Azure relation interactions)
  • Adding a source code repository service endpoint (for Bitbucket)
    • Add a depth of 3 for faster checkout
  • Project level variable sets
• Build level settings
  • Use Bitbucket Service endpoint for "Get sources" process
  • Triggers (on repo change?)
  • Linking Project level variable groups to build definition
  • Batch builds? "Batch changes while a build is in progress"
  • Testing extensions?
• Release level settings
  • Artefact retrieval conditions/triggers
  • Pre-deployment conditions/triggers

Things to think about

• Build format? $(date:yyyyMMdd)$(rev:.r) ? or something else?
• Test plans? Machines?
• Retention?
• How to export release level settings? as json?
• Build numbers in hosting location
• Moving things over from Build to Release def to enable parallel execution of agents

Random

Dumping all environment variables (Reference - Codewrecks )

$var = (gci env:*).GetEnumerator() | Sort-Object Name
$out = ""
Foreach ($v in $var) {$out = $out + "`t{0,-28} = {1,-28}`n" -f $v.Name, $v.Value}
 
write-output "dump variables on $env:BUILD_ARTIFACTSTAGINGDIRECTORY\test.md"
$fileName = "$env:BUILD_ARTIFACTSTAGINGDIRECTORY\test.md"
set-content $fileName $out
 
write-output "##vso[task.addattachment type=Distributedtask.Core.Summary;name=Environment Variables;]$fileName"

VSTS - Multi phase builds coming soon (Developing as at Sept 2017)
VSTS Extension - Variable Toolbox (for concatenating build variables)