Accessing Azure Artifacts feed in a Docker build

I’ve recently given talks at conferences and user groups on the topic of using Docker as a build engine, describing the builds using a Dockerfile. This has several advantages, such as fully consistent build no matter where you run it, no dependencies necessary except Docker.

Some things become a bit tricker though, I’ve blogged previously about how to run unit tests in a Docker build, including getting the test results out of the build container afterwards.

Another thing that you will soon hit if you start with Dockerfile builds, is how to restore packages from an authenticated NuGet feed, such as Azure Artifacts. The reason this is problematic is that the build will run inside a docker container, as a Docker user that can’t authenticate to anything by default. If you build a projects that references a package located in an Azure Artifacts feed, you’ll get an error like this:

Step 4/15 : RUN dotnet restore -s “https://pkgs.dev.azure.com/jakob/_packaging/DockerBuilds/nuget/v3/index.json” -s “https://api.nuget.org/v3/index.json” “WebApplication1/WebApplication1.csproj”
—> Running in 7071b05e2065
/usr/share/dotnet/sdk/2.2.202/NuGet.targets(119,5): error : Unable to load the service index for source https://pkgs.dev.azure.com/jakob/_packaging/DockerBuilds/nuget/v3/index.json. [/src/WebApplication1/WebApplication1.csproj]
/usr/share/dotnet/sdk/2.2.202/NuGet.targets(119,5): error :   Response status code does not indicate success: 401 (Unauthorized). [/src/WebApplication1/WebApplication1.csproj]
The command ‘/bin/sh -c dotnet restore -s “https://pkgs.dev.azure.com/jakob/_packaging/DockerBuilds/nuget/v3/index.json” -s “https://api.nuget.org/v3/index.json” “WebApplication1/WebApplication1.csproj”‘ returned a non-zero code: 1

The output log above shows a 401 (Unauthorized) when we run a dotnet restore command.

Using the Azure Artifacts Credential Provider in a Dockerfile

To solve this, Microsoft supplies a credential provider for Azure Artifacts, that you can find here https://github.com/microsoft/artifacts-credprovider

NuGet wil look for installed credential providers and, depending on context, either prompt the user for credentials and store it in the credential manager of the current OS, or for CI scenarios we need to pass in the necessary informtion and the credential provider will then automatically do the authentication.

To use the credential provider in a Dockerfile build, you need to download and configure it, and also be sure to specify the feed when you restore your projects. Here is snippet from a Dockerfile that does just this:

NB: The full source code is available here https://dev.azure.com/jakob/dockerbuilds/_git/DockerBuilds?path=%2F4.%20NugetRestore&version=GBmaster

# Install Credential Provider and set env variables to enable Nuget restore with auth

ARG PAT
RUN wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Microsoft/artifacts-credprovider/master/helpers/installcredprovider.sh | bash
ENV NUGET_CREDENTIALPROVIDER_SESSIONTOKENCACHE_ENABLED true
ENV VSS_NUGET_EXTERNAL_FEED_ENDPOINTS “{\”endpointCredentials\”: [{\”endpoint\”:\”https://pkgs.dev.azure.com/jakob/_packaging/DockerBuilds/nuget/v3/index.json\”, \”password\”:\”${PAT}\”}]}”

# Restore packages using authenticated feed
COPY [“WebApplication1/WebApplication1.csproj”, “WebApplication1/”]
RUN dotnet restore -s “https://pkgs.dev.azure.com/jakob/_packaging/DockerBuilds/nuget/v3/index.json” -s “https://api.nuget.org/v3/index.json” “WebApplication1/WebApplication1.csproj”