How to fetch files from remote host over SSH/SCP in Team Services build step

Question

With the build step "Copy files over SSH" in Team Services, it is possible to define an SSH endpoint and copy files to that host.

https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/docs/build/steps/deploy/copy-files-over-ssh

Now I want to fetch the files using the same SSH endpoint in Team Services. How can I do that?

Problem solved. Solution (but not so nice): pscp.exe was added to the repo. VSTS could then use the build step "command line" to execute scp operations, both from and to the VSTS host. — Mats, Sep 21 '16 at 14:09

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:34

One way is that you can add command line task to build defintion to call curl command to get file over SSH. If you are using on-premise build agent, you could refer to this thread to install curl in windows.

Another way (if you are familiar with typescript), based on the source code of copyfilesoverssh, it gets necessary information of SSH (e.g. username, password), then based on that information to connect to SSH server and upload files.

var sshEndpoint = tl.getInput('sshEndpoint', true); 
  var username:string = tl.getEndpointAuthorizationParameter(sshEndpoint, 'username', false); 
  var password:string = tl.getEndpointAuthorizationParameter(sshEndpoint, 'password', true); //passphrase is optional 
  var privateKey:string = tl.getEndpointDataParameter(sshEndpoint, 'privateKey', true); //private key is optional, password can be used for connecting 
  var hostname:string = tl.getEndpointDataParameter(sshEndpoint, 'host', false); 
  var port:string = tl.getEndpointDataParameter(sshEndpoint, 'port', true);

Also, based on this article’s sample, it can download file from server.

client.scp('admin:password@example.com:/home/admin/file.txt', './', function(err) {
})

So, you could refer to those code to build a custom build task to achieve download files from remote host over SSH/SCP.

Articles about add build task to VSTS: https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/docs/integrate/extensions/develop/add-build-task and http://blog.devmatter.com/custom-build-tasks-in-vso/

How to fetch files from remote host over SSH/SCP in Team Services build step

1 Answers1