Build.StagingDirectory and Build.ArtifactsStagingDirectory are the same directory

When I run my build with the PublishBuildArtifacts 1.0.4 task, I get errors like:

Executing the powershell script: C:\VSOAgent\tasks\PublishBuildArtifacts\1.0.4\PublishBuildArtifacts.ps1
Preparing artifact content in staging folder C:\VSOAgent\_work\1\a...
Copying all files from C:\VSOAgent\_work\1\a\layout\Microsoft.PythonTools to C:\VSOAgent\_work\1\a\layout\Microsoft.PythonTools
The process cannot access the file 'C:\VSOAgent\_work\1\a\layout\Microsoft.PythonTools\BuiltinScraper.py' because it is being used by another process.

Previously, the task would prepare artifacts in a staging folder that was different from Build.StagingDirectory, which the docs suggest using for temporary build artifacts.

I’ve worked around it by inserting an extra directory level into my build outputs, so they don’t conflict with where PublishBuildArtifacts tries to copy them, but ISTM that Build.StagingDirectory and Build.ArtifactsStagingDirectory should refer to different folders.

[zooba]

So Build.StagingDirectory was removed? That’s fine, but we were just following the MSDN docs and not hardcoding paths “blindly”.

It looks from the MD doc that we should change from Build.StagingDirectory to Build.BinariesDirectory.

[chrispat]

You shouldn’t rely on the name of any given folder, that is what the variables are for. We shortened the folder names to take up less path space and try to mitigate long path issues on windows. Further we added the Build.BinariesDirectory back for customers who were using the old build system and wanted to have a single place to redirect binaries to during their build. By default we let MSbuild put binaries where you have defined them to go. Trying to override that blindly causes unexpected results and hard to debug issues.

From: JoelKunze [mailto:[e-mail]] Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2015 10:03 AM To: Microsoft/vso-agent-tasks [e-mail] Subject: Re: [vso-agent-tasks] Build.StagingDirectory and Build.ArtifactsStagingDirectory are the same directory (#614)

I have noticed a change that may be related… On the build agents I run, the Build.StagingDirectory changed from the documented value of “$(Agent.BuildDirectory)\Staging” to “$(Agent.BuildDirectory)\a”

This appears to coincide with an agent update that occurred about October 7th. There is an additional folder named “b” created in the $(Agent.BuildDirectory) now as well, but it appears empty at least at the point our builds are failing due to the staging folder name change.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/Microsoft/vso-agent-tasks/issues/614#issuecomment-148059306.