I used to be able to use the service principal for AZ CLI or PWSH tasks in my DevOps pipeline, but have been banging my head against the wall since yesterday because I can’t get it to work anymore. Has something changed, or do I overlook something?

After reading this post I replicated the setup in my own pipeline, but the ‘servicePrincipalKey’ is empty.

The code I’m using in my pipeline is:

- task: AzureCLI@2
    displayName: 'Get Azure CLI credentials'
    inputs:
      azureSubscription: $(serviceConnection)
      scriptType: 'pscore'
      scriptLocation: inlineScript
      addSpnToEnvironment: true
      useGlobalConfig: true
      inlineScript: |
        $InformationPreference = "Continue"
        Write-Information "##vso[task.setvariable variable=CLIENT_ID]$env:servicePrincipalId" | Out-Null
        Write-Information "##vso[task.setvariable variable=CLIENT_SECRET]$env:servicePrincipalKey" | Out-Null
        if ([string]::IsNullOrEmpty($env:servicePrincipalKey)) {
          Write-Warning "Service principal key is empty"
        }
        elseif ([string]::IsNullOrEmpty($env:servicePrincipalId)) {
          Write-Warning "Service principal id is empty"
        }
        else {
          Write-Output "Service principal id and key are set"
        }

  - task: Powershell@2
    displayName: Output SPN
    inputs:
      targetType: inline
      workingDirectory: '$(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)'
      script: |
        Write-Host "CLIENT_ID: '$env:CLIENT_ID')"
        Write-Host "CLIENT_SECRET: '$env:CLIENT_SECRET'"

The results are:

AzureCLI@2 task:

WARNING: Service principal key is empty

Powershell@2 task:

CLIENT_ID: ‘***’)

CLIENT_SECRET: ”

Any thoughts?