How to download AL Symbols ‘offline’ from artifact

Introduction

Download AL Symbols! If you are involved in developing apps (PTE or AppSource) for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, you’re probably familiar with this command:

This command allows you to download the symbols for the app you’re currently working on. However, what if you want to automate this process?

My Use case

In my scenario, I need to compile and build the app in a build pipeline using Docker. This is a common requirement, but to accomplish this, I first need to download the symbols and then invoke the Compile-AppInNavContainer command from the BcContainerHelper module.
As you may know, the Compile-AppInNavContainer command requires a running container. Consequently, creating a container is a time-consuming process. To minimize build time, it would be beneficial to skip the container creation step. I would like to share my solution with you.

Solution

I created a PowerShell script that downloads the symbols for you. You can find the script in my github. The script is named Get-ALSymbolsFromArtifact.ps1.

Additionally, I have created two other scripts for downloading symbols for the test app and the compiler. You can locate them on the same repo:

• Get-ALTestSymbolsFromArtifact.ps1
• Get-ALCompilerFromArtifact.ps1

Note: The word ‘offline’ in the title is enclosed in quotes because the script does not actually download the symbols; instead, it copies them from the artifact. Therefore, an internet connection is necessary to download the artifact ;).

How to use

To utilize this script, you need to have the BcContainerHelper module installed (naturally ;)). The usage is straightforward. Simply call the script with the artifact URL as a parameter. The script will download the symbols and place them in the specified folder. You can also use the -createFolder switch to automatically create the folder if it does not already exist.

$artifactUrl = Get-BCArtifactUrl -type 'OnPrem' -country 'us' -version '22.3' -latest
Get-ALSymbolsFromArtifact -artifactUrl $artifactUrl -folder 'C:\temp\symbols' -createFolder
Get-ALTestSymbolsFromArtifact -artifactUrl $artifactUrl -folder 'C:\temp\symbols' -createFolder
Get-ALCompilerFromArtifact -artifactUrl $artifactUrl -folder 'C:\temp\compiler' -createFolder

If you omit the -folder parameter, the script will download the symbols (or compiler) and place them in the bcartifactsCacheFolder folder.

How to improve

The scripts are a simplified version of what we currently use in my company. If you want to improve the scripts, you can add the following features:

• Add support for downloading symbols for app based on the app.json file to handle dependencies.
• Add support for downloading symbols for multiple apps.
• …

Conclusion

I hope you find the scripts useful. If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave a comment below and share your use case. I would love to hear from you.