VSTS secrets as environment variables

Question

In the VSTS build, I set various variables (Edit build -> Variables tab), some I set as secret (click the lock), some I don't.

In the build, I run a command prompt task to run set -- e.g. show me all the environment variables. Those marked as secret aren't present.

How do I get VSTS secrets into environment variables?

Echoism

Possible duplicate of How to add secret variable as task environment variable in VSTS – Cholecalciferol

And my answer can be found on that question: https://mcmap.net/q/753605/-how-to-add-secret-variable-as-task-environment-variable-in-vsts – Cholecalciferol

Answer 1

Secret variables are:

• Encrypted at rest with a 2048-bit RSA key.
• Not returned back to the client. They are automatically masked out of any log output from the build or release.
• Not decrypted into environment variables. So scripts and programs run by your build steps are not given access by default.
• Decrypted for access by your build steps. So you can use them in password arguments and also pass them explicitly into a script or a program from your build step (for example as $(password)).

So, Secure variables need to be passed in to tasks as inputs. Check this case: How to add secret variable as task environment variable in VSTS

Stilly

So my task would need to take %SECURE% in as an arg, then within the task set SECURE=%SECURE% to re-form it as an env var? (I'm trying to pass secure configs into dotnet test. Arguments of mocking these details aside.) – Echoism

Is there any way to enumerate them and update VSTS step as the pipeline is being executed? this works okay when you have 1 or 2 variables, but managing 20 becomes ridiculously tedious – Schick