Getting error while deploying SCS $name item via AzDo pipeline: "Unable to find item data for $name"

Question

We're working with Sitecore 10.2 and utilizing the Sitecore Content Serialization CLI. During the deployment of serialized items in the Dev environment using the Powershell SCS package installation (via the AzDO pipeline), we encountered the following error related to the '$name' item:

System.AggregateException: One or more errors occurred. (Unable to find item data for /sitecore/templates/Branches/Feature/My Sites/Product/Available Product Renderings/$name (<item's GUID>), flagged to be created, in source data store. This should never occur.)
2023-11-17T05:51:45.7575197Z  ---> System.InvalidOperationException: Unable to find item data for /sitecore/templates/Branches/Feature/My Sites/Product/Available Product Renderings/$name (<item's GUID>), flagged to be created, in source data store. This should never occur. 

Also, before syncing, Sync process is able to evaluate and discover this file:

2023-11-17T05:51:44.9024556Z [master] [A] /sitecore/templates/Branches/Feature/My Sites/Product/Available Product Renderings/$name (<item's GUID>)

Side Note: It works on perfectly on local machine.

Answer 1

This problem can occur when you have different versions of the CLI involved in the process. Older versions serialize "$name" as "_name". Newer versions serialize "$name" as "#name". Ensure that you are using the same version locally when you serialize, in the Build Pipeline when you create the package, and in the Release Pipeline when you deploy the package.

Unless you wrote the pipelines to pull a specific version of the CLI, it's pulling the latest. So unless you've been updating your local CLI version, it's probably using an older version.

Run the following commands locally, reserialize your items, create PR, and try the deployment again.

dotnet tool update sitecore.cli
dotnet sitecore plugin init --overwrite