How to set the Description of an Azure DevOps Release via script?

Question

In Azure DevOps I'm trying to set the release description via PowerShell / CMD in order to have a dynamic description of my releases based on the input of the artifacts from the build step.

I've tried setting the release variables via powershell like:

Write-Host "##vso[task.setvariable variable=release.releasedescription;]bar"
Write-Host "##vso[task.setvariable variable=RELEASE_RELEASEDESCRIPTION;]bar"

But that didn't work and the description field remains always empty.

Is there any tweak / setting that would help achieve this behavior?

Answer 1

What you tried to do is just to set the environment variable that contains the release description data and not set the "real" release description, so after the release finished the description not changed.

If you want to set the release description during the release you can try to do it with Azure DevOps Rest API - Update Release.

So add a PowerShell task that executes the Rest API with Invoke-RestMethod, get the current release with GET method and then update the release with PUT, in the body change the description to the new one.

Answer 2

For anyone who simply wants to set the name of an Azure Pipelines run, you can find the description here.

TLDR: Set the top-level name: attribute.