tfs-cli | platform CLI for Microsoft Team Foundation Server | DevOps library

I am working on a build to run a powershell script on a remote machine, using the VSTS task :

I currently am using TFS2017 on premise, and this is version 1 of that task. There is a version 3 available on github here : https://github.com/Microsoft/azure-pipelines-tasks/tree/master/Tasks/PowerShellOnTargetMachinesV3

I am having an issue with this task failing, and I have read elsewhere that this version has a fix for my issue, so I want to update it if possible. I tried a few ways to do this, but I cannot work out what I am supposed to be doing. You would think there would be an update button in TFS! Well, there is, but it requests that you provide a .VISX file. Which the repo in GIT does not have.

I've tried running the steps in this other post: How to update the built-in Microsoft task library in TFS 2017? But running the command "npm run package -- --version " doesn't generate the VISX.

I tried running :

TFS 2018u1. I'm building an extension with custom context menu commands for release definitions. I'd like some of them to be conditionally invisible (upon the rights of the current user). Any way to hide them?

Deliberately not calling VSS.register() doesn't help; the custom commands are still there, just do nothing.

It's not a security measure, it's a usability thing (the menu is getting crowded).

EDIT: in the Contribution data structure there's a property called constraints. It's not documented, no idea where it comes from. Probably the manifest. The only mention of constraints I could find is in the TFX tool sources. Apparently, constraints is a valid value in the manifest JSON (probably under the contribution object), and it's supposed to be an array. One assumes, one of ContributionConstraint objects. The latter is kind of documented.

A constraint object has a name property that, according to the docs, contains a reference to an IContributionFilter class. I couldn't find any mentions of that class neither in docs nor in TypeScript sources. However, there's an interface Microsoft.VisualStudio.Services.ExtensionManagement.Sdk.Server.IContributionFilter in assembly Microsoft.VisualStudio.Services.ExtensionManagement.Sdk.Server.dll, and it has a Name property. There are derived classes in bin\Plugins\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Services.ExtensionManagement.Sdk.Plugins.dll:

• ExtensionLicensedFilter
• FeatureFlagFilter
• LegacyFeatureEnabledFilter
• ActiveExtensionFilter
• FeatureFilter
• SecurityFilter

Concentrating on the latter. The name is "Security". Looks like it supports the following properties:

• namespaceId (GUID) - AKA security namespace
• namespaceToken (string) - securable object token
• permission (int) - bit mask, similar to those in an ACL
• allowSystemContext (optional bool) - ???
• serviceInstanceType (optional GUID) - only matters for VSTS

If you specify a constraint in the manifest JSON under a contribution object, at the very least it propagates through TFS data structures and shows up under VSS.getContribution() in the extension's script. Now, on to the details of the security check...

I have tried to add additional configuration options to an existing VSTS build/release task from the official repository.

To test it, I used the tfs-cli to upload the task to my VSTS account. However, it appears to be broken since the code was based on some newer Vsts Task SDK version that has not yet been published to my VSTS account.

Since I used the same task guid as the official task, I have updated the official one efficiently and left it broken.

How do I revert these changes and get back to the latest official published version of the VSTS build task?

My company has a on-premise TFS 2017 instance. I know how to install and update extensions through the web interface, but it's pretty tedious. I'm wondering if there's a quicker way to do it with tfs-cli.