Is there a way to use VSTS Variable Groups per environment?

Question

I\'m moving my configuration from using web.config transforms to being based on VSTS variables. I get process variables, you define a variable, pick an environment, and you

Answer 1

I ended up using a powershell script to define my process variable based on the variable groups, it works great.

Let's say I want a variable named "LoggingConnectionString" and this has different values per environment

Steps:

1. Define a Variable group, e.g. "SharedLoggingVariables"
2. Inside this Variable group, define a variable/value for each environment, e.g. "LoggingConnectionStringDev", "LoggingConnectionStringProduction"
3. Back in your Process Variables for the Build/Release, make SURE you don't have a variable named "LoggingConnectionString", otherwise this will overwrite the value coming from the variable group
4. In your Release process, create a Powershell inline script at the beginning of the Agent with the following code

---

Param(
   [string]$LoggingConnectionString
)

Write-Host "##vso[task.setvariable variable=LoggingConnectionString]$LoggingConnectionString"

5. Pass your variable group as an argument to this inline powershell, e.g.

   -LoggingConnectionString "$(LoggingConnectionStringDev)"

The final powershell step should look something like this:

During release, the powershell will set your process variable from the variable groups. If powershell isn't an option for you, there are other options