Azure DevOps is a lot of things but it's not insecure

Azure DevOps suddenly not letting you manage Environments ? Sorry, it’s for your own security!

This article explains how to get around new security limitations (did I say “limitations”? I meant “features”) in Azure DevOps to make it tolerable to configure your Azure DevOps Deployment Environments. Because the recent changes to Azure DevOps have made it, quite frankly, intolerable. But – let’s take a step…Continue reading Azure DevOps suddenly not letting you manage Environments ? Sorry, it’s for your own security!

Azure DevOps build pipelines failing

Azure DevOps pipelines suddenly failing with “##[error]#0 building with default instance using docker driver”

Another (possibly?) timely and weird one here! This article explains how to work around Azure DevOps suddenly stopping to play nice with Docker and the rest of our tooling and causing all builds to fail with oddly non-descript error messages. Annoying to deal with but not the end of the…Continue reading Azure DevOps pipelines suddenly failing with “##[error]#0 building with default instance using docker driver”

Variable reference is not valid. ':' was not followed by a valid variable name character. Consider using ${} to delimit the name

How to fix Azure DevOps “Variable reference is not valid. ‘:’ was not followed by a valid variable name character. Consider using ${} to delimit the name”

This article explains one possible reason why you might run into an error like “Variable reference is not valid. ‘:’ was not followed by a valid variable name character. Consider using ${} to delimit the name” when using a PowerShell task in an Azure DevOps pipeline. But hey – at…Continue reading How to fix Azure DevOps “Variable reference is not valid. ‘:’ was not followed by a valid variable name character. Consider using ${} to delimit the name”

bash - it's even more of a mystery than PowerShell

Azure DevOps fails with “Error: The path ‘/home/vsts/work/1/s/your-repo’ does not exist” even though the repository is there for sure?

Eh, this was a weird one. This article explains how to get around an issue where your build tools fail due to weird “path does not exist” errors when you’re using bash to execute a restore to your project. The build would probably succeed nicely, but it fails due to…Continue reading Azure DevOps fails with “Error: The path ‘/home/vsts/work/1/s/your-repo’ does not exist” even though the repository is there for sure?