[Solved][Question] Set and use an encrypted environment variable

[kittaakos]

Is it possible to set and use an encrypted GH_TOKEN/GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable with a personal OAuth token for GH? It is fairly straightforward for Travis CI and AppVeyor too.

It would be used by, for instance, the electron-builder and also it is a nice to have for vscode-ripgrep to avoid Error: API rate limit exceeded.

If this is possible, can someone please share a link to a sample configuration?

I would like to achieve the followings:

• check out another private GitHub repository as part of the pipeline build,
• use a private NPM registry during my build and publish there (yarn publish --no-git-tag-version could help though), and
• deploy a new electron release to GH.

Thank you!

---

Solution:

1. Select your pipeline.
2. Click on Edit.
   
3. Click on Variables.
   
4. Define your variable. Make sure it is not a plain text.
   

azure-pipelines.yml:

pool:
  vmImage: 'Ubuntu 16.04'

steps:
- script: mkdir foo && cd foo && git init && git pull https://$GH_TOKEN@github.com/nameOrOrganization/repositoryName.git && ls -al
  displayName: 'Clone with a predefined GitHub OAuth token'
  env:
     GH_TOKEN: $(gh.token)

[TingluoHuang]

@kittaakos see whether the following help: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/process/variables?view=vsts&tabs=yaml%2Cbatch#secret-variables

[kittaakos]

It works 🎉 @TingluoHuang, thank you for the pointer.

I made several mistakes, but honestly, it is misleading that I must not use $(GH_TOKEN) but $GH_TOKEN in the script. See the second example here. I assume it is because I did not use $(variables.GH_TOKEN) format.

[TingluoHuang]

you don't have to use that, the following should also work.

- script: mkdir foo && cd foo && git init && git pull https://$(gh.token)@github.com/nameOrOrganization/repositoryName.git && ls -al
  displayName: 'Clone with a predefined GitHub OAuth token'