Azure-pipelines-tasks: Add support for custom conditions on task groups

[kzu]

Currently, individual tasks can be assigned a custom condition. Task groups don't have that capability though.

[bryanmacfarlane]

Yeah, it's in the works. It's not a task issue but a service side issue. task group support is coming soon (the main issue is the task group UI is still using the old editor)

[rmarinho]

👍 on this.. any news @bryanmacfarlane ?

[ivan-prodanov]

@rmarinho I just came to the conclusion that I need this and I need it now. After observing @bryanmacfarlane's comment I realized that if we set the condition to a task and then create a task group from that task, the condition will still be set, just not visible until they deploy the new UI. I just tried it and it works. 🥇

[kzu]

Yep, indeed. I found this out by coincidence.

[frankfuu]

Any ETA for this release?

[sibbl]

If someone else is looking for a workaround: using the dev tools of the browser of your choice, search for .prototype.beginUpdateTaskGroup in MS's code. In there, the variable t contains the JSON object sent to the REST endpoint. You can set a breakpoint before saving a task group and modify it as required, including the condition field.

Edit: seems like this issue is more for custom conditions on task groups, and not for setting custom conditions of tasks inside task groups. Sorry for that. I hope that both will be available in the future.

[jstawski]

Why is this closed? I still don't see the custom conditions on tasks within a Task Group

[bryanmacfarlane]

@jstawski - see the comment that went along with closing it.

[stijnherreman]

@bryanmacfarlane Is there a publicly tracked issue for migrating Task Groups to the new UI?

[jstawski]

I'm not sure if this merits a new bug or not, but here some feedback. As of today, it seems the only way to add a variable into a task group is to reference one in one of the tasks. That is problematic if the variable is only used on the custom condition as it is not being checked. I had to resolve by using a dummy task and reference the variable there, but it truly shouldn't be like that. Either add support to check for new variables on the custom condition or the ability to manually add a variable.

For others that might run into this problem:
My dummy condition is a Command Line task:
Tool: echo
Arguments: "$(VariableName)"

[deka]

Yes, not usable if the variable is only used on the custom condition.

[bergmeister]

@bryanmacfarlane This still does not seem to be implemented

[bryanmacfarlane]

@bansalaseem for task group question.

[bryanmacfarlane]

Since this is a service side issue, developer community would be a better channel. That's the only publicly tracking mechanism for the service.

[bansalaseem]

Thanks @jstawski for the feedback. Right now the workaround which you have done looks reasonable and we have a story in our backlog to manually specify a task group variable. I dont have a specific timeline when we will get to it though.

[AroglDarthu]

@bryanmacfarlane

Yeah, it's in the works. It's not a task issue but a service side issue. task group support is coming soon (the main issue is the task group UI is still using the old editor)

We are using TFS 2018 Update 2. There is still no option to add a condition to the Task Group!
I want to NOT RUN the entire task group, based on a single condition. Seems overkill to introduce a variable in one of the underlying tasks and then add a custom run condition on each of the tasks within the group. That's just really silly!

So why is this issue closed? There is a valid use case for having a custom run condition on the task group itself.

[harsh-vm]

Is there an update on this? I have the same requirement as AroglDarthu. I am using Azure DevOps and see no option to control execution of task group apart from hacky solution!

[guillermomartinez-accenture]

Are you planning to enable Custom Conditions on task groups any time soon?
The initial request was from Aug 2017.

[joshbrw]

Came here looking for this, almost 2 years later. Any updates?

[joshbrw]

Following on from my message above; the way that I ended up solving this was using separate Agent Phases and putting the task group into an Agent Phase that I've set up with execution conditions. If you do use this path, make sure you set the Dependencies on each phase so that it only runs if previous phases have been completed.

[ashokirla]

Due to few other priority items like pipelines YAML, we couldn't find bandwidth to work on this feature. As of now the backlog for the next 2 months is full. We will try to pick up task group conditions feature after that. Will keep you posted.

[robal]

Please add this. I need this to be able to run a Task Group in parallel using "multi-configuration".
For the impatient ones: I've found a sick workaround:

1) take your Task Group and add a dummy task to print two vars (this is just to make the vars appear on Task Group variable list). Eg:
Inline Powershell: Write-Host("$(selector) $(staticselector)")

2) specify Custom Condition on ALL tasks in the Task Group to:
and(succeeded(), eq(variables['selector'], variables['staticselector']))

3) Add $selector variable to your release, set to a multi-configuration CSV string, eg: "thread_one,thread_two,thread_three"

3) add your Task Group three times to a Multi-Configuration Agent Job. For each one, set:
$selector to $(selector)
$staticselector to one of the CSV values, eg "thread_one" for the first instance, "thread_two" for the second and "thread_three" for the third

4) Profit! Each multi-configuration job runs a separate thread of your Task Group with thread-specific parameters

[github-actions[bot]]

This issue is stale because it has been open for a year with no activity. Remove the stale label or comment on the issue otherwise this will be closed in 5 days

[AroglDarthu]

Oh, come on... has it been a year already? I thought the solution was in the works...

[paul-roberts-dt]

Another vote for this.

[shayki5]

+1 !

[maxkoshevoi]

+1

[anatolybolshakov]

Attached link to related Developer community issue - since it would be better place to get last updates about it's status.

Closing this issue here since it's not related to pipeline tasks itself.