Donovan Brown

There is a much easier way to do this now. You can read how here Setting up CI/CD with the TFS Plugin for Jenkins

In a previous post I showed how you could trigger a release from Jenkins using the Release Management REST API.  Since that post, the REST for Release Management as changed so I wanted to write and update.  Instead of just duplicating that post I decided to take it a step further and have the Jenkins build automatically trigger when I commit code to Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS).  This would give us a full CI/CD pipeline with Jenkins and VSTS. In this post I will show you the pieces needed to enable full CI/CD using Jenkins and VSTS.

Before I begin I will state some assumptions:

1. You have a working Jenkins installation with the following plugins:
   • Credentials
   • Get client
   • Git
   • Post-Build Script
   • PowerShell
2. You have a VSTS account
3. Your code will be in VSTS Git repository
4. The attached PowerShell file is in the root of your repository

We are going to begin and end this post in Jenkins.  Step one is to create an empty Freestyle project in Jenkins to wire up to VSTS.

1. Log into Jenkins
2. Click New Item

   Field Name	Value
   Item name	Jenkins CI-CD

3. Select Freestyle project
4. Click OK

You can leave this tab open and perform the next steps in a new tab of your browser.  We just needed a Jenkins build to configure VSTS against. We will return to this tab to complete the build at the end of the post.

To connect Jenkins to VSTS so it can clone the Git repository and authenticate during our REST calls, we are going to need to create a Personal Access Token.

1. Log into VSTS
2. Click your name in the upper right-hand corner
   
3. Click My security
4. Click Add
5. Enter appropriate values
6. Click Create Token
7. Copy the token value and store it somewhere safe
   

1. Return to the Jenkins tab

2. Field Name	Value
   Source Code Management	Git
   Repository URL	https://{instance}.visualstudio.com/DefaultCollection/{project}/_git/{repository}

3. Click Add next to Credentials
   
   

   Field Name	Value
   Kind	Username with password
   Scope	Global (Jenkins, nodes, items, all child items, etc)
   Username	{your vsts username}
   Password	{personal access token}
   Description	Jenkins Access Token from VSTS

4. Click Add
5. Select the new credentials
6. Click Add post-build action
7. Select Archive the artifacts
   

   Field Name	Value
   Files to archive	**/*

8. Click Add post-build action
9. Select Execute a set of scripts
10. Click Add build step
11. Select Windows PowerShell
    
12. Copy and paste the code below into the Command text box

    $EnvWORKSPACE = 'WORKSPACE'
    $EnvBUILD_NUMBER = 'BUILD_NUMBER'
    $workspace = (get-item env:$EnvWORKSPACE).Value
    $build_number = (get-item env:$EnvBUILD_NUMBER).Value
    invoke-expression ".\TriggerRelease.ps1 -TfsCollectionUri https://{instance}.vsrm.visualstudio.com/DefaultCollection -TeamProject {TeamProject} -ReleaseDefinitionId {ReleaseDefinitionId} -TargetEnvironmentId {TargetEnvironmentId} -BuildNumber $build_number -artifactAlias '{artifactAlias}' -artifactId {artifactId} -personalAccessToken {personalAccessToken}"

13. Update the Instance, Team Project, Release Definition Id, Target Environment Id, Artifact Alias, Artifact Id, and Personal Access Token
14. Click Save

Now all you have to do is commit a change to VSTS and Jenkins will build the code and trigger a release. When you do, the Service Hook we created will inform Jenkins, who will start a build.

Jenkins will pull the code from the VSTS Git repository using the Personal Access Token we created and build your project.  Finally Jenkins will use the PowerShell script to call the Release Management REST API to trigger the release.