azure pipeline variable to hold return value of DBT core macro

I have created an Azure pipeline (CI) via YAML file that executes DBT core models/macros in given sequences.

I want to declare a variable that will hold the value returned by the DBT MACRO

I have so far tried the below :

 variables:
  dbtMacroOutput: '' 

- script: |
    echo $(Build.Reason)
    pip install --upgrade pip
    pip install dbt-snowflake --user
    dbt run-operation myDbtMacro
    $dbtMacroOutput := $(dbt run-operation myDbtMacro)  # Capture the actual output
    Write-Host "##vso[task.setvariable variable=dbtMacroResult]$dbtMacroOutput"
    echo "The dbt macro result is $(dbtMacroOutput)"
  displayName: Use dbtMacroOutput dbtMacroOutput: ''  # Initialize with an empty string

But when executing, I get the message

:= command not found

Can anyone suggest if it is possible to achieve?

There seem to be a few issues in your code:

• The := syntax is not valid - use = operator to assign a value to a variable.
• You should use a pwsh or PowerShell@2 task to run Powershell commands, instead of script
• Variable dbtMacroOutput is being declared at the top but you're trying to set variable dbtMacroResult in the task?
• You can't use the pipeline variable in the same step where it's being defined

Example

The below example shows how to set and use a pipeline variable in the same job.

To keep it simple, I removed the dbt related commands - it should be easy enough for you to adapt it to your scenario:

trigger: none

pool:
  vmImage: 'ubuntu-latest'

jobs:
  - job: A
    displayName: 'Set pipeline variable'
    steps:
      - pwsh: |
          # set other commands here
          $dbtMacroOutput="value1" # replace with output of dbt command

          Write-Host "##vso[task.setvariable variable=dbtMacroResult]$dbtMacroOutput"
        displayName: Set pipeline variable dbtMacroResult
        name: setVariableStep
      - pwsh: |
          Write-Host "The dbt macro result is $(dbtMacroResult)"
        displayName: Use pipeline variable dbtMacroResult

Please note that if you want to make a variable available to future jobs, you must mark it as an output variable by using isOutput=true.

See Set a multi-job output variable and Use output variables from tasks for more details.