Azure private build agent : No agent could be found with the following capabilities: npm, azureps

Question

I am trying to use a local server as a build agent to build a project. The server already has

• VS 2015,
• VS 2017
• Node 6,7,8 via NVM
• NPM 4,5,6 via NVM

I can build the project locally via npm build or yarn build.

I have downloaded and configured and registered the private build agent already and I have it in the agent pool in the portal - xxx.visualstudio.com/xxx.

But when I try to schedule a build from the portal the following message is displayed :

No agent could be found with the following capabilities: npm, azureps

What do I need to fix so the build can run locally?

Answer 1

The problem was simple - I did not see where the Capabilities tab was. IMHO Requests and Capabilities are not easily discoverable. I saw it and I set the two variables to true and it started to work even though I did not know for sure if true is the right value.

Another problem was that NVM SYMLINK was not working as expected and the build agent could not find node.exe at all. It was not in the PATH at all. I uninstalled nvm and used only node 8.1.2 with npm 5 in order to make it run.

UPDATE As of today you can add a 'node tool installer' task to your definition - this is the better solution that is available today as D.J. points out in the comment section.