This extension provides an Azure DevOps build task for Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations.

Why we created this task

Microsoft now support Build automation with Microsoft hosted agents for Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations.

For leveraging this scenario, Microsoft published an extension for Azure DevOps : Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations Tools

Unfortunately, in this toolset, Microsoft did not include a task that could generate a source model package. As we were missing it at NSI, we have decided to create it.

How to Use

After installing the extension in your organization, you can add the Create Source Model Package task to your new or existing build pipelines.

Task description

The goal of Create Source Model Package task is to create a source model zip package file from a set of source models (X++ Metadata) and drop it in the build pipeline's resulting artifacts directory.

At this time, this task is only available for build pipelines. It requires the X++ compiler tools and 7zip to be installed on the agent.

How it works

This task was largely inspired from the existing Microsoft code. It's actually a mix of the existing "Create Deployable package" DevOps task and the Powershell script DynamicsSDK\GeneratePackage.ps1 available in regular D365F&O DEVBOXES.

The task will first initialize a list of models (from the Metadata directory) that are to be included in the resulting zip package. You can use the search pattern string to determine which models should be included or not.

Next, once the model list is retrieved, the task will loop on each model and call the ModelUtil.exe export command to generate the .axmodel files.

Hopefully, the task will put the resulting model files in a zip package created with 7zip