Accessing Git repo

This is maybe not directly on issue with the tasks but more with the agent. What is the recommended approach to run Git operation during a build?

My use case is that I have a repository utilizing git-lfs. Since VSTS only does a checkout I manually need to call git lfs fetch afterwards. The problem here is the authentication. I want to avoid to have to setup an service account for accessing the repo just for this case. The agent already somehow manages to checkout the repo. Is it possible to use the same approach for additional operations?

[fahnzmode]

@ericsciple - would you happen to have any additional info on the possibility of VSTS builds being able to checkout multiple git repositories? Would be very nice to have first-class support for this.

Dave Burnison mentions the steps needed to cleanly clone the git repo yourself:

1. Use a PowerShell task to call a script that: – Changes directories to the $(build.sourcesDirectory) – Creates a new folder called “Build” under $(build.sourcesDirectory) – Changes directories to the $(build.sourcesDirectory)\Build – Calls “git init” – Calls “git clone https://VSTSAccountName.visualstudio.com/SomeCollection/Build/_git/BuildUtilsStoredInGit” where the URL points to a Git repository that has a set of scripts that are similar to $/Build/PSScripts in the blog post.
2. Use additional PowerShell tasks to execute the script(s) as needed from $(build.sourcesDirectory)\Build (e.g. $(build.sourcesDirectory)\Build\PSScripts\ApplyVersionToAssemblies.ps1 )
3. At the end of your build process add a command line task to call the following command which will remove the local copy of the Git repository – RmDir /S /Q “$(build.sourcesDirectory)\Build”

(see his ‘June 1, 2016 at 8:22 pm’ comment here: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/premier_developer/2016/04/13/tips-for-writing-powershell-scripts-to-use-in-build-and-release-tasks/)

[ericsciple]

It’s something we want to do for multiple reasons. It’s not next though.