Install new versions of dependencies on Azure devops microsoft hosted build server

Question

I have an issue with my azure build pipeline for a Xamarin mobile app in iOS. The issue required mono version 6.10.0 to be available on the build server. Currently the pre-installed image for macOS 10.14 only contains Mono up to version 6.08. The image for macOS 10.15 does contain the right version of Mono but due to internal reasons I am unable to upgrade to 10.15 at this point.

Is there a way to update the pipeline to install the new version of Mono before building? Or are we completely limited to the software that is included in the image? I am using a microsoft hosted server.

Answer 1

Is there a way to update the pipeline to install the new version of Mono before building?

As you said, the Mono version 6.10.0 doesn't exist in the Microsoft-Hosted Agent: Macos-10.14, but you could run the script before the Xamarin task to install the target Mono version.

Here is the pipeline example:

steps:
- bash: |
   #!/bin/bash
   set -ex
   
   
   MONO_MACOS_PKG_DOWNLOAD_URL='https://download.mono-project.com/archive/6.10.0/macos-10-universal/MonoFramework-MDK-6.10.0.49.macos10.xamarin.universal.pkg'
   
   
   mkdir -p /tmp/mono-install
   cd /tmp/mono-install
   
   # debug: mono version before the install
   mono --version
   
   # download mono mac installer (pkg)
   wget -q -O ./mono-installer.pkg "$MONO_MACOS_PKG_DOWNLOAD_URL"
   
   # install it
   sudo installer -pkg ./mono-installer.pkg -target /
   
   # debug: mono version after install, just to confirm it did overwrite the original version
   mono --version
   
   # just for fun print this symlink too, which should point to the version we just installed
   ls -alh /Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/Current
  displayName: 'Bash Script'

- script: |
   mono -V
   
   cat `which mcs`
  displayName: 'Command Line Script'

Here is a Blog about install the mono.

Result: