Exporting Release Notes and WIKIs as PDFs using a new Azure DevOps Extension that wrappers AzureDevOps.WikiPDFExport

A common question I get when people are using my Release Notes task for Azure DevOps is whether it is possible to get the release notes as a PDF.

In the past, the answer was that I did not know of any easy way. However, I have recently come across a command line tool by Max Melcher called AzureDevOps.WikiPDFExport that allows you to export a whole WIKI (or a single file) as a PDF. Its basic usage is

• Clone a WIKI Repo
• Run the command line tool passing in a path to the root of the cloned repo
• The .order file is read
• A PDF is generated

This is a nice and simple process, but it would be nice to be able to automate this process as part of a build pipeline.

After a bit of thought, I realised I had much of the code I needed to automated the process in my WIKIUpdater extension as these tasks are based around cloning repos.

So I am please to say I have just released a new Azure DevOps extension WikiPDFExport that wrappers Max’s command line tool. It does the following

• Downloads the latest release of the WikiPDFExport tool from GitHub to the build agent (the exe is too big to include in the VSIX package)
• Optionally clone a Git based WIKI repo. As with my WikIUpdater tasks, you can pass credentials for Azure DevOps or GitHub
• Generate a PDF of a single file or the whole of a Wiki folder structure (based on the .order file) that was either cloned or was already present on the agent

A sample of the YAML usage of the task is as shown below. For full documentation see the extensions wiki pages for general usage and troubleshooting and the full YAML specification

- task: richardfennellBM.BM-VSTS-WikiPDFExport-Tasks.WikiPDFExportTask.WikiPdfExportTask@1 
  displayName: 'Export Single File generated by the release notes task'
  inputs:
    cloneRepo: false
    localpath: '$(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)'
    singleFile: 'inline.md'
    outputFile: '$(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)\PDF\singleFile.pdf'
- task: richardfennellBM.BM-VSTS-WikiPDFExport-Tasks.WikiPDFExportTask.WikiPdfExportTask@1
   displayName: 'Export a public GitHub WIKI'
   inputs:
     cloneRepo: true
     repo: 'https://github.com/rfennell/AzurePipelines.wiki.git' 
     useAgentToken: false
     localpath: '$(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)\GitHubRepo' 
     outputFile: '$(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)\PDF\publicGitHub.pdf'
- task: richardfennellBM.BM-VSTS-WikiPDFExport-Tasks.WikiPDFExportTask.WikiPdfExportTask@1
   displayName: 'Export a private Azure DevOps WIKI'
   inputs:
     cloneRepo: true
     repo: 'https://dev.azure.com/richardfennell/GitHub/_git/GitHub.wiki' 
     useAgentToken: true
     localpath: '$(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)\AzRepo' 
     outputFile: '$(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)\PDF\Azrepo.pdf'

So hopefully this new extension will give teams another way to present their release notes, whether it be an export of a whole WIKI or just a single page.