The Acquire Variable Lock action can be used to acquire a write lock on Configuration, Project and Application variables. These are the variables that you can edit manually on the server and are referred to as Server variables. Once a write lock is acquired no other builds can modify the value of the server variable until the lock is released, either at the end of the build or by another action.
Acquire Variable Lock
Name
A friendly name for this action (will be displayed in the actions workflow area).
Enabled
Determines if this action will be run within the relevant stage.
Variable
This drop down contains a list of Configuration, Project and Application variables accessible to the configuration. See Variables for details on how to create a variable. Note that Expression variables cannot be modified and are therefore not listed.
Options
Release write lock at the end of stage
Tick this option to release the write lock at the end of the stage rather than the end of the build.
Lock Timeout
If the server variable is locked by another build, the build will wait until the server variable lock is released. The maximum time it will wait can be set here. By default, it will wait for 24 hours,.
Lock Retry Delay (in seconds)
If the server variable is locked by another build, the current build will, by default, wait 3 seconds before retrying. This delay between retries can be set here. If this the value is set to zero then the default of 3 seconds will be used. Shorter delays may have a performance impact on server. Longer delays will mean that the build takes longer to to respond to the lock being released.
Note that there is no queueing - if more than one build is waiting for a variable lock, then the order in which the lock is acquired depends on which build makes a lock request first after the lock is released. So the order is essentially arbitrary.
Verbose logging
Tick to display more verbose information in the build log