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azdo-build-investigator

Investigate CI failures for dotnet/maui PRs — build errors, Helix test logs, and binlog analysis. Use when asked about failing checks, CI status, test failures, 'why is CI red', 'build failed', 'what's failing on PR', Helix failures, or device test failures.

Stars
23,265
Source
dotnet/maui
Updated
2026-05-31
Slug
dotnet--maui--azdo-build-investigator
View on GitHubRaw SKILL.md

// install — copy + paste into any project

mkdir -p .claude/skills && curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dotnet/maui/HEAD/.github/skills/azdo-build-investigator/SKILL.md -o .claude/skills/azdo-build-investigator.md

Drops the SKILL.md into .claude/skills/azdo-build-investigator.md. Works with Claude Code, Cursor, and any agent that loads SKILL.md files from .claude/skills/.

dotnet/maui CI Investigation Context

This skill provides MAUI-specific context for interactive CI investigation — answering "why is CI red?" and "is this PR ready to merge?". Use it together with the ci-analysis skill (loaded from the dotnet-dnceng@dotnet-arcade-skills plugin via .github/copilot/settings.json).

First: invoke the ci-analysis skill — it handles the core investigation workflow using Get-CIStatus.ps1 and gh CLI (with MCP tools as optional enhancements if available). This skill provides MAUI-specific corrections and context on top of that.

For the automated path (a maintainer comments /review tests on a PR), the review-test-failures skill does the same classification deterministically and posts a merge-readiness comment. Both skills reason from the same shared facts below.

MAUI CI facts (canonical)

All MAUI-specific facts live in .github/docs/maui-ci-facts.md — read it. It covers:

  • Pipeline names + definition IDs (maui-pr 302, maui-pr-devicetests 314, maui-pr-uitests 313), org/project, and investigation priority order.
  • AzDO data sources (anonymous public build/timeline/log REST APIs; _apis/test is optional enrichment).
  • XHarness exit-0 blind spot and the Helix aggregated endpoint for hidden device-test failures.
  • Container artifact binlogs (Bearer token + File Container API; mcp-binlog-tool).
  • Test count deduplication (group by test name + OS platform).
  • Baseline comparison (is the failure already red on the base branch?).
  • Visual baseline and platform mismatch guidance.
  • Gradle / Maven / CFSClean signatures and the ./eng/ingest-maven-deps.sh fix.
  • Common failure patterns table.
  • Merge-readiness criteria — the shared definition of Ready to merge / Not ready / Needs human investigation / Insufficient data / No failures found.

Do not restate those facts from memory; change them in the canonical doc only.

Script location

The ci-analysis skill and its Get-CIStatus.ps1 script are loaded automatically from the dotnet/arcade-skills plugin (configured in .github/copilot/settings.json via enabledPlugins). The CLI caches scripts to ~/.copilot/installed-plugins/dotnet-arcade-skills/. No manual download is needed.

⚠️ The ci-analysis skill's reference doc lists maui-public as the MAUI pipeline — this is outdated. Use the pipeline names in .github/docs/maui-ci-facts.md.

Using this skill

  1. Invoke ci-analysis to gather build/test status for the PR.
  2. Apply the MAUI corrections from .github/docs/maui-ci-facts.md — especially the correct pipeline names, the XHarness exit-0 cross-check on maui-pr-devicetests, and test-count deduplication.
  3. When asked whether a PR is ready to merge, compare failures against the base branch and apply the merge-readiness criteria from the canonical doc.
  4. Escalation: for deep Helix log analysis (recurring failures, machine-specific issues, comparing passing vs. failing runs), escalate to the helix-investigation skill.

When CI hasn't run: community PRs require a maintainer to trigger builds — see the canonical doc.

Nightly / Official Signed Build (inflight dogfood feed)

When asked about the nightly build, the inflight feed, or the dogfood feed being broken or stale — e.g. "nightly is broken please fix", "the dogfood feed stopped updating", or the release-readiness ❌ staleness banner fired — the pipeline to investigate is NOT maui-pr. It's the official signed build:
Pipeline dotnet-maui
Definition ID 1095
Org / Project dnceng / internal — requires internal access (not the anonymous dnceng-public org the PR pipelines use)
Defined by eng/pipelines/ci-official.yml
Schedule daily cron 0 5 * * * (05:00 UTC) on main, net*.0, and inflight/current
Feeds the ci.inflight dogfood NuGet stream — the official build on inflight/current produces the "shipping next" bits that release-readiness tracks. When this build is red, that feed goes stale and the release-readiness banner turns ❌.

Investigate (the AzDO MCP tools accept this internal pipeline — pass org: dnceng, project: internal):

  • azdo_builds with definitionId: 1095, branch: refs/heads/inflight/current → find the newest failed run (and confirm whether it's a one-off or a multi-day streak)
  • azdo_search_timeline (filter failed) on that build → identifies the failing job/step + its logId
  • azdo_search_log on that logId → the actual error

Known failure surface: the most common nightly break is the Pack Windows job → "Build Workloads, Sign & Publish" step (eng/pipelines/arcade/stage-pack.yml, building src/Workload/workloads.csproj). Recurring signature:

src\Workload\workloads.csproj(30,3): error MSB4019: The imported project
"...\artifacts\packages\Release\Shipping\vs-workload.props" was not found

vs-workload.props is generated by the _GenerateVSWorkloadProps target in src/Workload/Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Maui.Manifest/Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Maui.Manifest.csproj (AfterTargets="Build") during the preceding Pack, Sign step, then imported by workloads.csproj. If it's missing at import time, the manifest pack didn't stage it to ArtifactsShippingPackagesDir. Note the macOS Pack job can succeed while Pack Windows fails — a green macOS leg does NOT mean the dogfood feed is healthy.

Root cause of the Jun 2026 inflight/current outage (binlog-proven, fixed by #36089): the workload packs (Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Maui.Manifest, Microsoft.Maui.Sdk) target netstandard but are shipping packages, so they set <IsPackable>true</IsPackable> explicitly. PR #32203 ("Don't pack .NET Standard") added a blanket <IsPackable Condition="$(TargetFramework.Contains('netstandard'))">false</IsPackable> to Directory.Build.targets — which is auto-imported at the end of every project, so it overrode the packs' explicit true → IsPackable=false. With IsPackable=false, NuGet Pack no-ops; and because the "Pack, Sign" step runs -pack without -build (only the later workloads step uses -build), the Build target never ran → _GenerateVSWorkloadProps (AfterTargets="Build") never ran → vs-workload.props was never written → the line-30 import threw MSB4019. The fix guards the blanket rule with and '$(IsPackable)' == '' so explicit opt-ins survive. This regression was inflight/current-only (#32203's commit 543b1ebeb7 is not yet on main/net10.0) — so when it forward-ports, it must carry the guard or the break reappears. The general lesson when triaging this failure: confirm IsPackable actually evaluates true for the workload packs in the pack.binlog, and that the pack step's Build (hence _GenerateVSWorkloadProps) actually ran.

Distinguish from the release pipelines: ci-official-release.yml and maui-release-internal.yml are separate definitions used for shipping releases, not the nightly inflight dogfood build.