Zero work items?

[MarcelT-NL]

Hi,

When running Generate Release Notes (Crossplatform) 3.43.11 from an Azure Release pipeline, the extension finds zero work items.

Log:

2021-02-18T16:06:28.4284882Z ##[section]Starting: Generate Release Notes based on Release Comparison API
2021-02-18T16:06:28.4526853Z ==============================================================================
2021-02-18T16:06:28.4527526Z Task : Generate Release Notes (Crossplatform)
2021-02-18T16:06:28.4528085Z Description : Generates a release notes file in a format of your choice from the build or release history
2021-02-18T16:06:28.4528477Z Version : 3.43.11
2021-02-18T16:06:28.4528849Z Author : Black Marble
2021-02-18T16:06:28.4529581Z Help : Version: 3.43.11. More Information
2021-02-18T16:06:28.4530125Z ==============================================================================
2021-02-18T16:06:30.6183581Z Creating Azure DevOps API connections for https://dev.azure.com// with 'allowRetries' set to 'true' and 'maxRetries' count to '20'
2021-02-18T16:06:30.6187819Z Creating the credential handler from the OAUTH token
2021-02-18T16:06:30.8980320Z Getting the current release details
2021-02-18T16:06:31.3473127Z Show associated items for primary artifact only is set to false
2021-02-18T16:06:31.3479598Z Getting the Environment Id
2021-02-18T16:06:31.3483882Z Identified [build and deploy application] as having id [186]
2021-02-18T16:06:31.6381738Z Found 2 successful releases
2021-02-18T16:06:31.6384051Z Finding the last successful release
2021-02-18T16:06:31.6385686Z Getting all artifacts in the current release...
2021-02-18T16:06:31.6400539Z Found 1 artifacts for current release
2021-02-18T16:06:31.8416436Z Getting all artifacts in the most recent successful release [-2]...
2021-02-18T16:06:31.8421923Z Found 1 artifacts for most recent successful release
2021-02-18T16:06:31.8424297Z Looking at artifact [_]
2021-02-18T16:06:31.8429715Z Artifact type [Git]
2021-02-18T16:06:31.8432233Z Build Definition ID [429c08ad-4187-4993-8afd-f9b190243333]
2021-02-18T16:06:31.8433263Z Build Number: [47bf719a]
2021-02-18T16:06:31.8434074Z Is Primary: [true]
2021-02-18T16:06:31.8434954Z Skipping artifact as cannot get WI and commits/changesets details
2021-02-18T16:06:31.8435378Z
2021-02-18T16:06:32.0880155Z Removing duplicate Commits from master list
2021-02-18T16:06:32.0881336Z Removing duplicate WorkItems from master list
2021-02-18T16:06:32.0894114Z Expanding the truncated commit messages...
2021-02-18T16:06:32.0897366Z Expanded truncated commit messages 0
2021-02-18T16:06:32.0904277Z Get details of [0] WIs
2021-02-18T16:06:32.0907810Z Getting direct parents and children of WorkItems
2021-02-18T16:06:32.0913590Z Getting all parents of known WorkItems
2021-02-18T16:06:32.0919238Z Added 0 parent WI to the list of direct relations
2021-02-18T16:06:32.0922279Z Leaving WI in default order as returned by API
2021-02-18T16:06:32.2241214Z Could not get details of Trigger PR an error was seen: TypeError: Cannot read property 'repository' of null
2021-02-18T16:06:32.2241920Z Getting all completed Azure DevOps Git Repo PRs in the Team
2021-02-18T16:06:32.4693470Z Found 1 Azure DevOps PRs in the repo
2021-02-18T16:06:32.4693876Z Enriching known Pull Requests
2021-02-18T16:06:32.4698976Z Checking the CS associated with the PRs to see if they are inturn associated PRs
2021-02-18T16:06:32.4702437Z Total Builds: [0]
2021-02-18T16:06:32.4703089Z Total Commits: [0]
2021-02-18T16:06:32.4703381Z Total Workitems: [0]
2021-02-18T16:06:32.4704062Z Total Related Workitems (Parent/Children): [0]
2021-02-18T16:06:32.4704547Z Total Release Tests: [0]
2021-02-18T16:06:32.4706511Z Total Tests: [0]
2021-02-18T16:06:32.4706792Z Total Pull Requests: [0]
2021-02-18T16:06:32.4707123Z Total Indirect Pull Requests: [0]

I guess the "Skipping artifact as cannot get WI and commits/changesets details" is the issue.

If I log the JSON output it also says "{"workItems":[],"commits":[],"pullRequests":[],"tests":[],"builds":[],"relatedWorkItems":[],...."

We have lots of work items on our backlog/board. What does the extension base the query on?
Do I need to link the work items somehow?

Any help is appreciated, looking forward to using this awesome extension!

Kind gards,
Marcel

[rfennell]

Yes the issue is the artifact type

I can tell from your log that you are running the task inside the Classic UI Release (as opposed to a Classic UI Build or a Modern YAML build). When running in a release the task has to inspect the release artifacts, which could be builds or links to source repos, to look for content to generate the release note with.

If the artifact type is not a build (either Classic UI or YAML) the task can do nothing. In your case you have linked to a Git repo directly to the release, this is fine for the release but no use to my task.

You need to create a build off the git repo and then consume this build as an artifact if you wish my task to work. This is because at its core my task used the API call getChangesBetweenBuilds (buildA, BuildB) to get the information to build the release notes with

[MarcelT-NL]

Thanks, that makes sense.
One question though: how do you link WI to builds, to have them show up with getChangesBetweenBuilds?
Or is that done automagically?

[rfennell]

You need to associate WI with commits, or PRs. Once this is done they get associated with builds that associate with the commits.

[MarcelT-NL]

thank you