How to build Xamarin.Mac app on Azure pipelines - xamarin

Question

Azure pipelines has tasks that support building Xamarin apps for iOS and Android. For iOS this includes the optional capability to package a .ipa file that is suitable for upload to the store.
For my project I'm building a macOS app with Xamarin.Mac and looking to be able to automate the build in Azure pipelines, but get stuck at the packaging step. Using an msbuild invocation I can have the .app built and signed in the pipeline just fine.
The next step in the VisualStudio GUI would be clicking "Build->Archive for Publishing", which produces a .xcarchive file (not entirely sure what this is? Just a zip maybe?), then you can click "Sign and Distribute" to go through a wizard that will produce the .pkg file for submission to the store.
This part is what I can't find a way to do in the pipeline. Is there a manual command line way to build the signed .pkg file in lieu of direct support for Xamarin.Mac?
EDIT: I found this article, but adding the "/p:ArchiveOnBuild=true" argument to my msbuild invocation still has not produced an xcarchive file. The docs seem to indicate that it should, so I'm at a loss there.

Answer 1

Old post but never the less; I have just spent most of a day struggling with the same problem.
I found this excellent blog-post helping a bunch
https://witekio.com/blog/xamarin-mac-on-azure-devops/
The idea is basically to build on MacOS and use bash instead of Powershell
I ended up with the following pipeline:
trigger:
- master
variables:
#app data
outputAppName: '<Name of outputtet app without .app>'
projectName: '<Name of your project>'
#keys and accounts
azureSubscription: <Azure subscription for publishing result>
storageAccountKey: <storage account key>
storageAccountName: <storage account name>
storageContainerName: <storage container name>
# Working Directory
workingDirectory: '$(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)/$(projectName)'
configuration: 'Release'
outputArtifactPath: '$(workingDirectory)/$(projectName)/bin/$(configuration)/$(outputAppName).app'
# Agent VM image name
vmImageName: 'macos-latest'
stages:
- stage: Build
displayName: Build stage
jobs:
- job: Build
displayName: Build
pool:
vmImage: $(vmImageName)
steps:
- checkout: self # self represents the repo where the initial Pipelines YAML file was found
displayName: Check out
clean: true
#lfs: false # whether to download Git-LFS files
submodules: true # set to 'true' for a single level of submodules or 'recursive' to get submodules of submodules
persistCredentials: true
path: htpaa_backend_shared_util
condition:
- task: Bash#3
displayName: 'Change Mono version'
inputs:
targetType: 'inline'
script: |
SYMLINK=6_4_0
MONOPREFIX=/Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/$SYMLINK
echo "##vso[task.setvariable variable=DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH;]$MONOPREFIX/lib:/lib:/usr/lib:$DYLD_LIBRARY_FALLBACK_PATH"
echo "##vso[task.setvariable variable=PKG_CONFIG_PATH;]$MONOPREFIX/lib/pkgconfig:$MONOPREFIX/share/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH"
echo "##vso[task.setvariable variable=PATH;]$MONOPREFIX/bin:$PATH"
- task: NuGetToolInstaller#1
displayName: 'Use NuGet'
- task: NuGetCommand#2
displayName: 'NuGet restore'
inputs:
restoreSolution: '$(workingDirectory)/*.sln'
- task: MSBuild#1
inputs:
solution: '$(workingDirectory)/*.sln'
platform: 'Any CPU'
configuration: '$(configuration)'
restoreNugetPackages: true
- task: ArchiveFiles#2
inputs:
rootFolderOrFile: '$(outputArtifactPath)'
includeRootFolder: true
archiveType: 'zip'
archiveFile: '$(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)/$(Build.BuildId)_$(projectName).zip'
replaceExistingArchive: true
verbose: true
- task: AzureCLI#2
displayName: 'CLI Copy files to Azure Storage'
inputs:
azureSubscription: '$(azureSubscription)'
scriptType: ps
scriptLocation: inlineScript
inlineScript: |
az storage blob upload --account-name $(storageAccountName) --container-name $(storageContainerName) --name '$(Build.BuildId)_$(projectName).zip' --file '$(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)/$(Build.BuildId)_$(projectName).zip' --account-name $(storageAccountName) --account-key $(storageAccountKey)