Problem Description
I was having some problems trying to use variables created in one stage in another stage and managed to find various articles old and new describing how this can be done. The more recent articles/posts identifying the new syntax
$[stageDependencies.{stageName}.{jobName}.outputs['{stepName}.{variableName}']
Used like this:
variables:
myVariable: $[stagedependencies.CreateStageVarStage.CreateStageVarJob.outputs['SetValueStep.VariableFromFirstStage']]
This works great until you needed to use job templates.
None of the samples I found online covered the situation of templates. They just demonstrated how multiple stages in the same yaml file could obtain the value.
The syntax depends on being able to put the expression into a variable. Unfortunately, when you use a template for a job, it's not possible to declare variables and passing it as a parameter results in it being unevaluated.
- stage: UseJobTemplateStage
displayName: 'Use Job Template Stage'
dependsOn: CreateStageVarStage
jobs:
- template: templates/job-showstagevars.yml
parameters:
ValueToOutput: $[ stagedependencies.CreateStageVarStage.CreateStageVarJob.outputs['SetValueStep.VariableFromFirstStage'] ]
In this snippet, it comes through as-is. The value does not get substituted in.
Theoretically, you could set your job to have the expression present in the variables block but that sort of hard-coding undermines one of the main benefits of templates.
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