tfsazure-devopstfs-2015ms-release-management

Prevent unnecessary artifact download when using Release Management


I'm using TFS 2015 Update 2 Release Management (i.e, the "Release" tab), and I've got my build putting the desired output in a file share drop location. It looks something like:

/Drop
--> /App 1
--> /App 2
--> /App 3

My Release Definition has a Powershell task to deploy each application. This works great, and because each of the above apps (App 1, App 2, App 3) are all defined as their own artifacts, I get nice path selection when I bring up the Linked Artifacts dialog when finding the powershell script to execute.

The problem is when the VSOAgent is doing the deployment on a given deployment server, it downloads ALL linked artifacts for the entire release definition - regardless of if they're used. So if I have a single Powershell task referencing App 1, I get App 2 and App 3 downloaded as well.

In my case, my build results in dozens of artifacts, only perhaps 20% of which are deployed to any given environment. So I'm download a TON of stuff that I don't need. Indeed, this means something that should take (and DID take in the old Release Management) perhaps 5 minutes now takes 20 minutes just to download the artifacts.

Is there a way to prevent this?


Solution

  • Release Management downloads all the artifacts published by the build definition that you selected by default. There isn't any setting to configure this for now. You can submit a feature request on VSTS User Voice.