Deprecate old Azure Artifacts tasks in Azure Pipelines and default to new, auth-only tasks

  • Article

We get a lot of support requests and feedback from our current Azure Artifacts tasks in Azure Pipelines (NuGet, npm, Maven, etc.). Having these large, bulky tasks with built-in versions of command-line tools can create a lot of problems:

  1. When something fails, it's hard to know if it's the command-line tools, the authentication, the restore/publish, etc.
  2. It's hard to keep the tasks updated with the latest and greatest releases of command line tools, so we miss out on new functionality (like skipping duplicates in NuGet/Maven) The solution we landed on was to create auth-only tasks that users can set up at the beginning of their pipelines. After successfully authenticated, users can use custom scripts to publish/restore packages.

We now have the following lightweight, auth-only tasks in GA that we recommend customers to use. The plan is to deprecate the old unreliable tasks in the future.

  1. Maven Authenticate
  2. NuGet Authenticate
  3. Python Pip Authenticate
  4. Python Twine Upload Authenticate

Important

Migration Notice: For those using the NuGetRestoreV1 and NuGetInstallerV0 pipeline tasks, it's imperative to transition to the NuGetCommand@2 pipeline task as soon as possible. Warnings will be issued in your pipelines soon. If no action is taken, starting November 27th, 2023, your builds will fail.