Major enhancements to my Azure DevOps Cross Platform Release Notes Extension

author Richard Fennell calendar Dec 4, 2019 · 2 min read · DevOps DevOps VSTS VSTS  ·
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Over the past few days I have published two major enhancements to my Azure DevOps Cross Platform Release Notes Extension.

Added Support for Builds

Prior to version 2.17.x this extension could only be used in Releases. This was because it used Release specific calls provided in the Microsoft API to work out the work items and changesets/commits associated with the Release. This is unlike my older PowerShell based Release Notes Extension which was initially developed for Builds and only later enhanced to  work in Releases, but achieved this using my own logic to iterate across Builds associated with Releases to work out the associations. With the advent of YAML multistage Pipelines the difference between a Build and a Release is blurring, so I thought it high time to add Build support to my Cross Platform Release Notes Extension. Which it now does.

Adding Tag Filters

In the Cross Platform Release Notes Extension you have been able to filter the work items returned in a generated document for a good while, but the filter was limited to a logical AND i.e. if the filter was

@@WILOOP:TAG1:TAG2@@

All work items matched would have to have both the TAG1 and TAG2 set Since 2.18.x there is now the option of a logic AND or an OR.

  • @@WILOOP:TAG1:TAG2@@ matches work items that have all tags (legacy behaviour for backward compatibility)
  • @@WILOOP[ALL]:TAG1:TAG2@@ matches work items that have all tags
  • @@WILOOP[ANY]:TAG1:TAG2@@ matches work items that any of the tags

Update 5th Dec In 2.19.x there is also the option to filter on any field in a work item as well as tags

  • @@WILOOP[ALL]:System.Title=This is a title:TAG 1@@

For more details see the extension’s WIKI page

Futures

My plan is to at some point deprecate my PowerShell based Release Notes Extension. I have updated the documentation for this older extension state as much and to recommend the use of the newer Cross Platform Release Notes Extension. At this time there is now little that this older extension can do that cannot be done by my newer Cross Platform Release Notes Extension. Moving to it I think makes sense for everyone for the…

  • Cross platform support
  • Use of the same means to find the associated items as the Microsoft UI to avoid confusion
  • Enhanced work item filtering

Lets see of the new features and updated advisory documentation effect the tow extension relative download statistics