TFS 2015–Uploading Build vNext tasks without enabling basic authentication

I talked about the tfs-cli tool before. This tool allows you to create and upload your own custom build steps both in VSTS and TFS on premise. Unfortunately to be able to use it on your local TFS instance, you have to enable Basic Authentication. If you don’t want to do that, you have to use the REST api’s to upload your custom task.

Although this is certainly possible, it’s not that easy to do. Luckily a colleague spend some time creating a Powershell script to simplify the process:

	param(
	[Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][string]$TaskPath,
	[Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][string]$TfsUrl,
	[PSCredential]$Credential = (Get-Credential),
	[switch]$Overwrite = $false
	)
	# Load task definition from the JSON file
	$taskDefinition = (Get-Content $taskPath\task.json) -join "`n" | ConvertFrom-Json
	$taskFolder = Get-Item $TaskPath
	# Zip the task content
	Write-Output "Zipping task content"
	$taskZip = ("{0}\..\{1}.zip" -f $taskFolder, $taskDefinition.id)
	if (Test-Path $taskZip) { Remove-Item $taskZip }
	Add-Type -AssemblyName "System.IO.Compression.FileSystem"
	[IO.Compression.ZipFile]::CreateFromDirectory($taskFolder, $taskZip)
	# Prepare to upload the task
	Write-Output "Uploading task content"
	$headers = @{ "Accept" = "application/json; api-version=2.0-preview"; "X-TFS-FedAuthRedirect" = "Suppress" }
	$taskZipItem = Get-Item $taskZip
	$headers.Add("Content-Range", "bytes 0-$($taskZipItem.Length - 1)/$($taskZipItem.Length)")
	$url = ("{0}/_apis/distributedtask/tasks/{1}" -f $TfsUrl, $taskDefinition.id)
	if ($Overwrite) {
	$url += "?overwrite=true"
	}
	# Actually upload it
	Invoke-RestMethod -Uri $url -Credential $Credential -Headers $headers -ContentType application/octet-stream -Method Put -InFile $taskZipItem

view raw UploadTasks.ps1 hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Just invoke the script, specify the location of your custom tasks, the url of your TFS instance and your windows credentials.