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Windows Containers

Windows Containers

It is possible to run Windows Containers the same way one can run Linux containers on Windows Community Cluster. Simply use windows_container instead of container in .cirrus.yml files:

windows_container:
  image: cirrusci/windowsservercore:2019
  os_version: 2019

task:
  script: ...

Cirrus CI will execute scripts instructions like Batch scripts.

OS Versions

By default, Cirrus CI assumes that the container image's host OS is Windows Server 2016. Please specify os_version filed to override it. Cirrus CI support all versions of Windows Containers including: 2016, 1709, 1803 and 2019.

Deprecation of 2016 Windows Docker Containers

Windows Containers 2019 got many performance improvements and image size optimizations comparing to 2016 version. Therefore Cirrus CI will switch the default os_version to 2019 on August 1st 2019 and completely remove support of 2016 Windows Containers on community cluster starting from September 1st 2019.

windows_container:
  image: cirrusci/windowsservercore:2019
  os_version: 2019

windows_task:
  install_script: choco install -y ...
  ...

PowerShell support

By default Cirrus CI agent executed scripts using cmd.exe. It is possible to override default shell executor by providing CIRRUS_SHELL environment variable:

env:
  CIRRUS_SHELL: powershell

It is also possible to use PowerShell scripts inline inside of a script instruction by prefixing it with ps:

windows_task:
  script:
    - ps: Get-Location

ps: COMMAND is a simple syntactic sugar which transforms it to:

powershell.exe -NoLogo -EncodedCommand base64(COMMAND)

Environment Variables

Some software installed with Chocolatey would update PATH environment variable in system settings and suggest using refreshenv to pull those changes into the current environment. Unfortunately, using refreshenv will overwrite any environment variables set in Cirrus CI configuration with system-configured defaults. We advise to make necessary changes using env and environment instead of using refreshenv command in scripts.

Chocolatey

All cirrusci/* Windows containers like cirrusci/windowsservercore:2016 have Chocolatey pre-installed. Chocolatey is a package manager for Windows which supports unattended installs of software, useful on headless machines.