I have a large (lots of dependencies, thousands of files) nodejs app that I am deploying with an Azure Devops YAML build and Azure Devops "classic editor" release pipeline.
Is there some way to copy JUST new and changed files during a file copy, not every single file? My goal is to reduce the time it takes to complete the copy files step of the deploy, as I deploy frequently, but usually with just changes to one or a few files.
About copying only the changed files into artifacts for releasing, if the changed files are in a specific folder , you can copy files in the specified folder by specifying SourceFolder and Contents arguments in the Copy Files task.
If the changed files are distributed in different folders, I am afraid that there is no out-of-the-box method to only pick the changed files when using copy file or PublishArtifacts task.
As workaround, we could add powershell task to deletes all files (recursive) which have timestamp that is < (Now - x min), with this way Artifact directory contains of ONLY CHANGED files. More detailed info please refer this similar case.
Alternatively, you can call Commits-Get Changes rest api through a script in the powershell task, and then retrieve the changed files in the response and then copy them to specific target folder.
GET https://dev.azure.com/{organization}/{project}/_apis/git/repositories/{repositoryId}/commits/{commitId}/changes?api-version=5.0
