Is it possible to put delay between tasks or conditional loop

Question

Is it possible to either loop or delay between running tasks in either build or release pipelines? I deploy containers as part of those pipelines and they take time to spin up and be available for webtests, so I can not run webtest immediately following Release task. What can be a solution to this requirements inside TFS or VSTS?

Are you using the Docker extension or are you running home-grown scripts to do this? https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscs-rm.docker — Daniel Mann, Jul 26 '17 at 18:13
Docker built-in task by Microsoft. This still does not solve the issue since after the service deployment and build I need to check if it's running properly and issue HTTP request to it. It takes a minute to spin up and initialize a container and I need to know how to pause or run in a loop test — Gregory Suvalian, Jul 26 '17 at 18:24

score 31 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 26 '17 at 18:33

31

Put an in-line PowerShell task in place that runs Start-Sleep -Seconds 10 or however long you want to wait.

Or better yet, write your own script that polls your containers for availability.

answered Jul 26 '17 at 18:33

Daniel Mann

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This solution functionally works, and is probably the best choice if the delay is a few seconds, but for any longer delay (minutes+), one thing to keep in mind is that this keeps an agent from your pool that is not doing anything useful. For such longer delays, the agentless job/phase approach (in smoksnes' answer) is probably a better use of the pool resources, even if the resumption of the pipeline means redownloading sources/artifacts/etc. – fbrosseau Jan 12 '21 at 21:54

smoksnes · Answer 2 · 2022-10-14T06:46:19.780

18

You can add an Agentless phase and put a Delay-task in it. Then your build will be delayed X minutes. Then you may continue your pipeline with an agent phase. Just make sure to configure Run this phase or set a dependency between the phases. This works in TFS and Azure Devops Server.

edited Oct 14 '22 at 06:46

answered Oct 30 '19 at 08:20

smoksnes

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 13 '23 at 07:55

As shown for release tasks by smoksnes' answer, the Delay agentless task can also be used in Azure DevOps YAML (build) pipelines. Here is an example:

pool: server

steps:
  - task: Delay@1
    inputs:
      delayForMinutes: '5'

Note that the pool: server is the key here. It makes this task run without the need of an agent. ADO offers a few of these agentless tasks, manual validation for example may be useful if the delay you need isn't consistent.

Is it possible to put delay between tasks or conditional loop

3 Answers3