VSTS Release Manager copy only specific files

Question

I want to download a specific folder from my team project in VSTS and copy it to a server on premise. I've setup the vsts agent and it can copy files just fine by using the "Windows Machine File Copy", but my problem is the agent downloads my whole team project starting from the root.

In Artifacts when I choose Link an artifact source and under type choose Team Foundation Version Control, under Source (repository) I can only choose my team project $/myTeamProject in the dropdown list. I'm not able to provide a path in VSTS like $/myTeamProjet/Main/subfolder.

Is this the wrong approach? I basically want to copy some files from a subfolder in my team project in VSTS to a on premise machine, without downloading everything from the whole root folder ($/myTeamProject). It takes forever when I trigger a Release with a singe task that copies files. How can the agent map only a specific folder and not the whole root folder?

Answer 1

My opinion is that it's not a great approach. Your build should be publishing a set of artifacts that represents a full set of deployable bits that will remain static as you deploy them through a pipeline.

Think of this scenario: You have a release definition with a pipeline defined that goes Dev -> QA -> Prod.

You deploy to Dev. Your release definition pulls in Changeset 1234 from source control.

A few hours later, you deploy to QA. Your release definition pulls in Changeset 1234.

Someone changes some source code. You go to deploy to Prod. Your release definition pulls in Changeset 1235. Now you're deploying some stuff that hasn't been tested in a lower environment. You've just drastically increased the likelihood of a problem.

Same scenario applies if you ever want to redeploy an old version to try to repro a bug.

In short: publish that folder as an artifact as part of your build process.

Answer 2

In release definition, you can’t specify part of files to download from the artifacts (and the artifact source link is for you to choose artifact from which build definition).

But you can specify the files you want to copy by Windows Machine File Copy task. For the source option in Windows Machine File Copy you can specify the subfolder you want to copy, such as $(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)/BuildDefinition/drop/Main/subfolder.