Cannot checkout to $(Build.SourcesDirectory)

[d5han]

Required Information

Question, Bug, or Feature?
Type: bug

Enter Task Name: checkout

Issue Description

The checkout task cannot make use of the $(Build.SourcesDirectory) variable in its path argument because it is a "rooted" path. This requires working around the issue by knowing what the SourcesDirectory will resolve to, and what working directory the checkout task will run in (especially since it doesn't take a workingDirectory argument).

If the reason for blocking rooted paths is concern the task will create files outside of its pipeline workspace, allowing an exception to this error when the argument to path is within $(Pipeline.Workspace) would be a good resolution.

Example:

- checkout: example-repo
  path: $(Build.SourcesDirectory)/example-repo

Results in:

##[error]/home/agent/myagent/_work/13/s/example-repo can not be a rooted path.

[anatolybolshakov]

Hi @d5han at the moment it is by design - checkout task supports only relative paths and chooses root directory by itself - depending on set of repositories used/build definition/project collection (see docs for more details).
We also have another enhancement in a backlog and PRs on review which add capability to re-use repositories outside of working directory - feel free to track progress around these changes here.

[github-actions]

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[ghost]

Documentation implies this is a perfectly OK thing to do.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/yaml-schema/steps-checkout?view=azure-pipelines

" path: string # Where to put the repository. The root directory is $(Pipeline.Workspace)."