Warning Filters do not seem to screen out specified build warnings

[ajurry]

Describe the context

• Extension: BuildQualityChecks
• Environment: Azure DevOps Services (cloud)
• Agent type: Self-Hosted Agent
  • Agent version: Standard_B12ms
• Pipeline type: YAML Pipeline

Describe the problem and expected behavior I'm currently trying to setup the BuildQualityChecks on my current build pipeline, to ignore two specific warnings, but it doesn't seem to work.

My current task is setup like the following, with the bonus entries for debugging issues.

      - task: BuildQualityChecks@8
        displayName: 'Task: Check no build warnings introduced'
        inputs:
          checkWarnings: true
          warningFailOption: 'fixed'
          warningThreshold: 0
          showStatistics: true
          warningFilters: |
            /^.+\[warning\].+(MSB3277).+/i
            /^.+\[warning\].+(MSB3247).+/i
          fallbackOnPRTargetBranch: true

The build job has the following warnings present

2022-06-12T22:03:54.3486440Z ##[warning]e_config Tests\config_json_test.cpp(23,0): Warning XUNIT1: config_json_test::test_reads - 1 == 0
##[warning]C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\MSBuild\Current\Bin\Microsoft.Common.CurrentVersion.targets(2203,5): Warning MSB3277: ...
##[warning]C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\MSBuild\Current\Bin\Microsoft.Common.CurrentVersion.targets(2203,5): Warning MSB3247: ...

The basic output for BuildQualityChecks

Overall total warnings: 3
Overall filtered warnings: 0
[SUCCESS] Warnings policy passed with 0 filtered warning(s) out of 3 total warning(s).
No baseline build for current branch found. Looking for builds on pull request target branch.

In which it has found the three warnings, but seems to say that it succeeded, even though one of the warnings should cause this task to fail. Note, I have added a dummy warning by creating a test that should fail.

Other notes

• If I remove the warningFilters entirely, it fails, saying their are three issue found (expected behaviour)
• If I remove one of the entries, like MSB3277, it passes even though it should definately fail, but succeeds
• I also added some other patterns, all of which seem to lead to a build success. If I remove the warningFilters entirely, it fails, saying that their are three issues found. I have also found that any input inside the

As a work around, I am planning to just set the warning limit to a specific number of warnings for the time being, which should cause the above task to fail.

If the above is just a small issue on my part, feel free to reply with a possible resolution and I give it a go!

[ReneSchumacher]

Hi @ajurry,

as described here, warning filters are not meant to ignore warnings (maybe we should rename the parameter to warningSelectors). When you add warning filters, you tell the task to only look for warnings matching your filters.

Ignoring warnings is best done with the MSBuild or compiler flags (see here for more information). If you need to suppress your two MSBuild warnings, you can add the parameter /p:NoWarn=MSB3277,MSB3247 to your MSBuild/VSBuild step.

[ajurry]

Ohhh... Thanks for this! I think renaming the parameter sounds like a good idea to me! I clearly just misread the documentation.

You're right that it's best to ignore the warnings at a build level, so I will update that build step. Feel free to close this issue, I am leaving it open incase you want to turn it into a ticket for updating the parameter.

[ReneSchumacher]

Hi @ajurry,

I'm closing this issue now as I have (finally) renamed the parameters in the next version. I'll hopefully be able to release the new version by the end of this week.

Thanks for your feedback!