Publish the Advanced Installer packages as builds artifacts in Azure DevOps

This tutorial will guide you to access the installation packages created by Visual Studio build tasks in Azure DevOps by publishing them as build artifacts

Assuming you have an Azure (DevOps) Pipeline containing an Advanced Installer Tool Installer task and a Visual Studio Build (see this tutorial: Configure Azure DevOps build environment for your VS solution including an Advanced Installer setup project), in order to publish the Builds artifacts follow the steps:

1. Add the Copy Files task

From "Tasks" tab add the “Copy Files” task by clicking on the + sign next to the “Agent Job” . Drag and drop the “Copy Files” task under “Visual Studio Build” task.

Copy files task

2. Add the Publish Build Artifacts task

From Tasks tab add the Publish Build Artifact task by clicking on the + sign next to the “Agent Job”. Drag and drop this new task after the “Copy Files” task in the Pipeline order.

Publish task

3. Configure the Copy Files task

Go to Copy Files task. The location where the installation package will be created by the build task should be entered in the “Source folder” field

ImportantBy default, this location is relative to the location of the .AIP project. The build will be placed next to the .AIP, in a subfolder named using the .AIP project name and “-SetupFiles” suffix. For example if the .aip project name is “Your Application”, the folder containing the package will be named “Your Application-SetupFiles”

Press the […] button next to the “Source Folder” field and pick the folder from your repository containing the .AIP project file

Append “\AI Setup Project1-SetupFiles” to the above folder

Copy the path from “Path to publish” field from the “Publish Build Artifacts” task in the “Target folder” field of the “Copy files” task.

Configure copy

4. Access the artifact

Trigger the build by clicking on the Queue button. Click on the hyperlink containing the build number to open the "Logs" tab.

Build number

After the build is finished just click on the “Artifacts" button from the top right corner to download the package.