Understanding the directory structure created by Azure DevOps tasks

If you are beginner in Azure DevOps, understanding of when & which folders are created and populated by the pipeline tasks, this is one of the first step in learning Understanding the directory structure created by Azure DevOps tasks.

Azure DevOps Agent will supports Windows,Linux / Ubuntu, macOS Operating Systems but in this post we are going to check from the windows Agent machine.Let’s try to understand the folder structure by creating a very simple YAML based Azure DevOps Pipeline and add the Tasks based on the below instructions.

Let we understand the directory structure created by Azure DevOps tasks here !

Let we list all the folders that are created during the pipeline execution. It’s called as Workspace and so the local folder path can be referred using a Pre-defined variable called $(Pipeline.Workspace)

We are going to list all the folders (using below YAML with PowerShell task) that are created for a given current pipeline and this is called as Workspace. And the local folder path can be referred using a Pre-defined variable called $(Pipeline.Workspace)

In the below YAML, we added the powershell task to prints the folder structure inside the $(Pipeline.Workspace)

Once your pipeline is executed, you will be able to see the folders like a, b, s and Test Results available in the workspace as shown in below snap shot.

Now based on the above image, Let’s now understand these folders and its usages in detail.

Folder Name: a
Referred using: $(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)/ $(Build.StagingDirectory)/ $(System.ArtifactsDirectory)

Artifact Staging Directory is a pre-defined variable and used in Build Pipelines for storing the artifacts of solution which get build (simply its output artifacts). if you confused, in simple it is output of the Build process for any type of solution ( like .net, java, python etc) or it could be as simple as copy files.

The publish build artifacts task creates an artifact of whatever is in this folder. This folder will get cleared/purged before each new build.

Folder Name: b
Referred using: $(Build.BinariesDirectory)

Binaries directory is a pre-defined variable used for storing the output of compiled binaries that are created as part of compilation process

Folder Name: s
Referred using: $(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory) / $(Build.SourcesDirectory)

Default working directory is a pre-defined variable that is mostly used to store the source code of the application. $(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory) is used automatically by the checkout step which download the code automatically as shown in below snap shot. In simple, this is the working directory and where your source code is stored.

Folder Name: TestResults
Referred using: $(Common.TestResultsDirectory)

Test results Directory contains the local directory of the agent which could be used for storing the Test Results.

Summary of directory structure created by Azure DevOps tasks

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