Timeout for a whole pipeline w/manual steps in Azure DevOps

Question

I have created a release pipeline in Azure DevOps, with several stages, deployments to each environment. On some of the environments (Test and Production), I have manual approval tasks (not set in YAML, but on the environment). If the approval task is not performed within a set time, I want the whole pipeline to cancel.

I have set a timeoutInMinutes on the stage itself, however, the timeout never starts, as the stage is waiting for the approval before it can start at all.

I haven't found a way to set a timeout on the approval/review activity, nor have I found a way to have a different stage/job independent of the others sit and wait for a timeout and cancel the job with a logging command ##vso[task.complete result=Canceled;]DONE

See the screenshot. The pipeline just sits and waits forever. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Timeout for a whole pipeline w/manual steps in Azure DevOps

Yes, you are right. I could reproduced this issue on my side.

As we know, the Timeout is used:

To avoid taking up resources when your job is hung or waiting too long, it's a good idea to set a limit on how long your job is allowed to run.

When we set the checks on the stage. Our job is in the pending state not Running, At this time, the timeout we set has not yet started working. It only starts timing after our job starts running. So, we need a timeout for the checks, just like the timeout for Pre-deployment approvals:

I could not find any solution/workaround after spending a long time, but I found this is a highly prioritized feature requirement that has been tracked by the Azure Devops teams after confirming with Azure devops teams.

Now, I could see the status of this feature timeout for the checks request is In Progress at sprint 158,

I believe this feature will meet us soon, please pay attention to the release notes of Azure devops. Thank you for helping us build a better Azure DevOps.

Hope this helps.