Pipeline artifacts

Just like classic builds, YAML pipelines can be used to build and publish artifacts. As the task used to do this is a task like any other, it can be added directly to the list of steps in a job.

However, with the introduction of YAML pipelines, a new type of artifact has become available—the so-called pipeline artifact. This comes with the benefit of improving the speed at which large artifacts can be uploaded and downloaded. When working with classic releases, pipeline artifacts are not automatically downloaded, whereas build artifacts are.

To publish a pipeline artifact, the following YAML can be used in the steps keyword of a job:

steps:
- publish: folder/to/publish
  artifact: artifactName

Pipeline artifacts are mainly intended to be downloaded in multi-stage YAML pipelines, which are also covered in the next chapter.