CODEWITHSUNDEEP
azure-devopsazure-pipelines
max
max

Reputation: 61

Azure Pipeline root variables in templates

I am trying to use variables defined at the root level on a YAML pipeline inside Azure DevOps inside templates via the template syntax, but it seems that the variables are not available inside the templates, but when adding the steps directly to the pipeline, the exact same thing works perfectly.

So with a pipeline snippet like that

variables:
- name: test
  value: asdf

stages:
- stage: 
  jobs:
    - job: test_job
      steps:
        - script: echo "${{ variables.test }}"
    - template: ./test.yaml

And a test.yaml like that

jobs:
  - job: test
    steps:
      - script: echo "${{ variables.test }}"

The script inside the test_job job writes out asdf while the job inside the template just resolves to echo "".

Since my understanding of pipeline templates is, that those basically get inserted into the main pipeline, this seems like a bug. Any ideas on how to use the root variables in a template syntax inside templates or why this is not working? (Macro synatx is not an option as I need the variable inside a templated condition like ${{ if eq(variables['test'], 'asdf') }})

Upvotes: 6

Views: 2607

Answers (1)

Sibtain
Sibtain

Reputation: 1649

For security reasons, we only allow you to pass information into templated code via explicit parameters. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/process/templates?view=azure-devops

The means the author of the pipeline using your template needs to commit changes where they explicitly pass the needed info into your template code.

There are some exceptions to this, where the variable is statically defined in the same file or at pipeline compile time, but generally speaking, it’s probably better to use parameters for everything that does not involve system-defined read-only dynamic variable and custom-defined dynamic output variables.

This behavior is by design, check this thread in the developer community

So you can either pass the variable as a parameter to the template or define a centralized variables file to include in the template like here

Upvotes: 4

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