TFBuild.IsRunningOnVSTS is confusing when using own build agent

What You Are Seeing?

I have a VSTS build agent, which is triggering a cake build on GitHub commits.

I tried using the TFBuild.IsRunningOnVSTS to check if this was a build running on VSTS, as I am also using AppVeyor.

What is Expected?

I would have expected TFBuild.IsRunningOnVSTS to return true. It returned false.

This seems to be per design as seen in the TFBuildProvider

What version of Cake are you using?

Latest

I discussed this briefly with @patriksvensson on Gitter and we kind of agreed that the IsRunningOnVSTS and IsRunningOnTFS properties could be a bit misleading.

@patriksvensson suggested a possible rename:

IsRunningOnVSTS -> IsRunningOnSharedAgent IsRunningOnTFS -> IsRunningOnOwnAgent

To me this would be much more clear as VSTS can both run shared and own agents.

@agc93 you seem to be the original author of this feature, what do you think about this?

[agc93]

Any thoughts/feedback before I start on this @Cheesebaron or @patriksvensson ? I’ve talked to Microsoft about it, so I’ll try and improve the logic as well as adding that new property.

[agc93]

Okay so I don’t think removing IsRunningOnVSTS/IsRunningOnTFS is either a) the right call or b) something we can change at this point (that’s one hell of a breaking change).

As discussed, you can already use TFBuild.Environment.Agent.IsHosted to confirm if you’re on a hosted agent, regardless of the IsRunningOn* properties.

I will look into improving the logic of IsRunningOn and PR it when I get a chance.