Dynamic selection of values in YAML deployment pipelines

Question

I'm writing a pipeline to deploy some "code" (flows used inside a product) into an environment. The Build portion is automatic, but the Deploy portion is manual and we use Git tags to flag and manage candidates for promotion.

I've seen examples for how to set up parameters in a DevOps pipeline, and I've also obviously seen how you can choose a branch or tag relating to the version of the repository source you wish to work with when you manually run the pipeline.

I'd like to combine the 2:

• Choose the target environment. eg: Test, QA, Prod

The pipeline then filters the tags that you can choose from. We want deployment to follow a set order, so you can only deploy into QA something that was already deployed previously into Test, etc.

• Choose from the filtered set of tags

At this point, the pipeline deploys the version related to the tag you selected from the curated options.

I can do this in Jenkins:

• parameters block containing a choice to pick the environment
• first stage
  • creates the tag filter based on the chosen environment
  • Uses the filter to get the relevant tags
  • input step to get the user to choose the tag to deploy
• Manual checkout based on the chosen tag, etc, etc

From what I've read so far:

• there is no YAML task for user interaction within the pipeline, so no direct equivalent for the Jenkins input step
• parameter values are static, so you can't use 2 parameters and derive the options for the 2nd from the option chosen for the 1st

So how do people do this in Azure? (Or don't they?) I know you can go into the dropdown and just select a tag from the complete list of tags in the repository, but there are no safeguards around that at all. Not what we want. Has anyone successfully implemented something like this before?

Answer 1

I am afraid that there is no out-of-box method in Azure DevOps can meet your requirement completely.

When Azure DevOps pipeline is running, it is non-interactive and we cannot manually input/select the value of the Pipeline variable.

On the other hand, pipeline parameter setting occurs simultaneously, and it does not support setting the value of another parameter based on the value of one parameter.

For a workaround, you can split the pipeline into two.

The first pipeline can select a stage and get the corresponding tags through the selected stage. Then it will update the pipeline two YAML to set the parameters values.

The second pipeline can support select the updated parameters value of Pipeline One.

I can fully understand your requirement. You can create a suggestion ticket in Developer Community to report your requirement.