Required variables at queue time

Question

When running our Release build (which ultimately labels and versions a changeset), I want the variables to be supplied at queueing time. For example 1.0.23 below:

Is there any way to set these variables as required in order to execute the build?

This new "vNext" build platform is incredibly difficult to Google for.

Answer 1

The best I have come up with thus far is to add a task as the first step in the first phase of the build that checks the required variables are set. If any are not, it fails the build.

I use PowerShell for this:

if ([string]::IsNullOrWhitespace($env:Major)) { throw "Major not set" }

This is not ideal, as the build still has to wait to get scheduled on an agent, sync sources, &c. before the validation code runs and fails the build. But, it's still better than building everything just to have, say, packaging (step 14/15) fail because the version wasn't set.

I've opened a feature request on the VSTS UserVoice page asking for "required queue variables".