Azure DevOps Agent

An Ansible role that installs and configures a Linux machine to be used as an Azure DevOps build or deployment agent.

See this blog post for more detail.

Requirements

See prerequisites

Installing on MacOS can be problematic when trying to use an admin user for connecting and another user for running the service. pipelining = True can help, especially if you run into issues where the devops agent user cannot access the temporary files ansible is creating.

Role Variables

Available variables are listed below, along with default values (see defaults/main.yml):

    az_devops_accountname: null
    az_devops_accesstoken: null
    az_devops_project_name: null
    az_devops_agent_version: 2.188.3
    az_devops_agent_user: "az_devops_agent"
    az_devops_agent_uid: null
    az_devops_agent_name: "{{ ansible_hostname }}"
    az_devops_server_url: "https://dev.azure.com/{{ az_devops_accountname }}"
    az_devops_agent_folder: "/home/{{ az_devops_agent_user }}/agent/"
    az_devops_work_folder: "/home/{{ az_devops_agent_user }}/agent/_work"
    az_devops_agent_pool_name: "Default"
    az_devops_agent_role: "build"
    az_devops_deployment_group_tags: null
    az_devops_environment_name: null
    az_devops_deployment_group_name: null
    az_devops_agent_replace_existing: false
    az_devops_reconfigure_agent: false
    az_devops_agent_user_capabilities: null
    az_devops_proxy_url: null
    az_devops_proxy_username: null
    az_devops_proxy_password: null

• az_devops_accountname

  The name of your Azure DevOps account, i.e. https://dev.azure.com/YOUR_ACCOUNT_NAME

• az_devops_accesstoken

  The Personal Access Token (PAT) used to authenticate to your account. See here for details on how to generate this value.

  Note: Think about using Ansible Vault to secure this value.

• az_devops_project_name

  The name of the Azure DevOps project in which to register the agent (only used for deployment groups).

• az_devops_agent_version

  Version of the installed agent package. Should be periodically updated to the latest version (see here).

• az_devops_agent_user

  Name of the user used to run and configure the service.

• az_devops_agent_uid

  UID of the user used to run and configure the service.

• az_devops_agent_group

  Default group of the user used to run and configure the service.

• az_devops_agent_name

  Name of the agent shown in Azure DevOps (defaults to the name of the host.).

• az_devops_server_url

  Url for your Azure DevOps account.

• az_devops_agent_folder

  Folder location for all the agent specific files (note: important that the service user needs execution permissions on all the files in this folder).

• az_devops_work_folder

  Folder location for all the work specific files (i.e. pulled source code and build results).

• az_devops_agent_pool_name

  Pool name in which the Azure DevOps agent is added.

• az_devops_agent_role

  Use either build, deployment or resource. Build role allows the use of the agent as a build server in pipeline build or releases. Deployment role allows the use of the agent in a deployment group. Resource role allows the use of the agent as a virtual machine resource that can be targeted by deployments from a pipeline and belongs to an environment.

• az_devops_deployment_group_tags

  Use in conjuction with the deployment agent role. Allows the use of tags to identify the agent (ex: QA, Staging, Prod, etc.)

• az_devops_deployment_group_name

  Use in conjuction with the deployment agent role. The name of the deployment group in which to add the agent. This needs to be manually created in you Azure DevOps project beforehand.

• az_devops_environment_name

  Use in conjuction with the resource agent role. The name of the environment in which to add the VM resource. This needs to be manually created in you Azure DevOps project beforehand.

• az_devops_agent_replace_existing

  Adds the --replace argument to the configuration script for the scenario where you need to replace an exiting agent with a new host.

• az_devops_reconfigure_agent

  Forces a reconfiguration of the agent even if the service is already active

• az_devops_proxy_url

  The URL of the proxy server, format is http://url:port

  This assumes the proxy does both http and https

• az_devops_proxy_username

  Username for the proxy

  If the proxy does not require authentication, then just leave defaults

• az_devops_proxy_password

  Password for the proxy

  Again if proxy does not require authentication, just leave the defaults.

  Note: Think about using Ansible Vault to secure this value.

• az_devops_agent_user_capabilties

  A Dictionary of environment variables to set for the agent process which translate to User Capabilties which can be helpful for setting release pipeline demands

  Example usage:

    - az_devops_agent_user_capabilties:
      user_capabilty_key: user_capability_value

Example Playbooks

Build Agent

- hosts: agents
  roles:
      - gsoft.azure_devops_agent
  vars:
    - az_devops_agent_role: build
    - az_devops_accountname: fubar
    - az_devops_accesstoken: ***

Deployment Agent

- hosts: agents
  roles:
      - gsoft.azure_devops_agent
  vars:
    - az_devops_agent_role: deployment
    - az_devops_accountname: fubar
    - az_devops_accesstoken: ***
    - az_devops_project_name: baz
    - az_devops_deployment_group_name: fubar_group
    - az_devops_deployment_group_tags: "web,prod"

Resource

- hosts: agents
  roles:
      - gsoft.azure_devops_agent
  vars:
    - az_devops_agent_role: resource
    - az_devops_accountname: fubar
    - az_devops_accesstoken: ***
    - az_devops_project_name: baz
    - az_devops_environment_name: staging

Proxy

- hosts: agents
  roles:
      - gsoft.azure_devops_agent
  vars:
    - az_devops_agent_role: build
    - az_devops_accountname: fubar
    - az_devops_accesstoken: ***
    - az_devops_proxy_url: "http://127.0.0.1:8080"
    - az_devops_proxy_username: bob
    - az_devops_proxy_password: ***

License

Copyright © 2020, GSoft inc. This code is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. You may obtain a copy of this license at https://github.com/gsoft-inc/gsoft-license/blob/master/LICENSE.