Case sensitivity / preservation feature for Azure DevOps Organizations older than 2018

[leonardocaylent]

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• I'd be willing to implement this feature (contributing guide)

Describe the user story
As a developer, I want to create an environment variable called ATLANTIS_AZUREDEVOPS_LEGACY_URL_ISSUE to convert the Azure Devops Organization name to lower case in all type of service hooks (v1.0 & v2.0)

Describe the problem in detail
Not moving to the new Azure DevOps URL causes the Atlantis service hooks to have different folder names on these 2 scenarios:

A)Pull Request Comments  (Using Service hook v2.0)
B)Pull Request Updates/Creates (Using Service hook v1.0)

Evidence:

1)Pull request commented on (version 2.0)
2)Pull request updated (version 1.0)
3)Pull request created (version 1.0)

1)https://dev.azure.com/MYCompany/1234567-abcd-abcd-abcd-987654321/_apis/git/repositories/1234abcd-9876-1234-a123-123456789/pullRequests/000001
2)https://mycompany.visualstudio.com/1234567-abcd-abcd-abcd-987654321/_apis/git/repositories/1234abcd-9876-1234-a123-123456789/pullRequests/000001
3)https://mycompany.visualstudio.com/1234567-abcd-abcd-abcd-987654321/_apis/git/repositories/1234abcd-9876-1234-a123-123456789/pullRequests/000001

This is creating 2 different folders for the plans:

/home/atlantis/.atlantis/repos/MYCompany/terraform-modules/terraform-live/000001/default/c1/us-east-01/base
/home/atlantis/.atlantis/repos/mycompany/terraform-modules/terraform-live/000001/default/c1/us-east-01/base

So the plan triggered by opening the Pull request on "3)PullRequestCreated" creates the auto-plan at /mycompany/ and when i run atlantis apply it tries to find apply the plan at /MYCompany/, which it doesn't exist at that moment
Checking some old issues, it seems that this is related to a previous migration where Azure Devops changed the URL and preserved the old name to use in the different service hooks.

Describe why this is important to have
We are doing this because of the impact that other pipelines/webhooks/CICD/and others could have if we turn on the setting "Use the new URL"

Describe the solution you'd like
-As this is only affecting a reduced number of users, the idea is to put some logic on the current code to convert the Azure Devops Organization Name to lowercase so the plans coming from both service hooks (v1.0 & v2.0) can be saved in the same folder. In order to achieve this, the plan is to have an environment variable called ATLANTIS_AZUREDEVOPS_LEGACY_URL_ISSUE = true (I'm totally open to suggestions to change this name if needed) and the users affected will have this value on true.
-For unaffected users the variable value will be false by default if it's not specified.
-We'll include some logic to do the conversion of the ADOrganization to lowercase, if it's on false, nothing will happen.(I'll update the ticket with more details when I get to the Azure Controller Code, didn't explore it yet)

Describe the drawbacks of your solution
The drawback is that this effort won't be useful if Azure forces the migration to the new url in the future. The migration was announced back on 2018 (Article here) but more than 6 years passed and there is no official date where they are going to enforce the usage of the new url. Since that is not going to happen in the near future it seems like a really small risk. Also this feature could and should be easily removed if that happens in the near future.

Describe alternatives you've considered
Alternatives to this issue are enabling the New URL Setting on the Azure Devops Organization but this is a big risk since it can affect:

1. Git remotes
2. CI/CD pipelines
3. Service connections (OAuth or service connections that use hardcoded repository/project URLs may break or need manual updates)
4. Webhooks and integrations
5. Manual bookmarks, documentation, or wikis
6. API consumers / scripts
7. Azure Repos badges
8. Git submodules

Image Link

The Current Hotfix:
If you are being affected by this issue, the best thing to do is disabling the 2)Pull request updated (version 1.0) and 3)Pull request created (version 1.0) service hooks.
Considerations: you will loose the ability to auto-plan and auto-unlock the PRs automatically. But you can easily solve this by running atlantis plan when the PR is created, and atlantis unlock after you applied and merged your PR
What happens when I disable service hooks for v1.0?
Atlantis uses the same folder for all operations /home/atlantis/.atlantis/repos/MYCompany/ to save the plans and doesn't have any errors

How this feature will be developed
1)I will rely on the Atlantis community, first looking and understanding the code and the controllers that could help on solving this issue
2)I will propose 1 or more ideas to solve this issue
3)I will create a Pull Request to get reviews and feedback
4)I will test this issue before merging the PR on 1 Azure Devops Organization that is having this issue with a testing connected repository to create a terraform resource and confirm that the solution works as expected

[dosubot]

There is currently no existing feature or ticket in Atlantis that specifically addresses the case sensitivity issue with Azure DevOps Organizations created before 2018. However, based on the codebase and configuration, your proposed solution is feasible and aligns with how similar issues are handled elsewhere in Atlantis.

Key Findings

• The core logic for handling Azure DevOps webhook events is in the VCSEventsController, which processes incoming events and delegates to parsing and handling functions for Azure DevOps pull requests and comments.
  View source

• The parsing of Azure DevOps repository information (including organization/owner name) is handled in ParseAzureDevopsRepo within event_parser.go. This is where the organization name is extracted and used to construct the internal repository model and folder paths.
  View source

• Case-insensitive logic is already used in other parts of Atlantis, such as the RepoAllowlistChecker, which normalizes strings to lowercase before comparison. This pattern can be safely applied to your use case.
  View source

• Atlantis supports configuration via environment variables for Azure DevOps integration, so introducing a new variable like ATLANTIS_AZUREDEVOPS_LEGACY_URL_ISSUE is consistent with existing patterns.
  View source

Implementation Guidance

• The most direct place to implement the lowercasing logic is in the ParseAzureDevopsRepo function. You can check for the presence and value of the ATLANTIS_AZUREDEVOPS_LEGACY_URL_ISSUE environment variable, and if set to true, convert the extracted organization/owner name to lowercase before constructing the repo model and folder path.
• This change will ensure that all service hooks (v1.0 and v2.0) use the same normalized folder path, preventing the split you described.
• The logic should be gated behind the environment variable, defaulting to false to avoid impacting unaffected users.
• Testing should include both legacy and current Azure DevOps URLs, with and without the environment variable set, to ensure backward compatibility.

Potential Impacts

• This solution is low-risk and easily reversible if Microsoft enforces the new URL format in the future.
• No other workarounds or solutions for this specific issue were found in the codebase or documentation.

If you proceed with this implementation, it should resolve the folder path inconsistency for legacy Azure DevOps organizations without affecting other users or integrations. If you need more detailed code pointers or have questions about specific parts of the implementation, let me know!

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