Technically, COPYARTIFACT_BUILD_NUMBER_SUFFIX are implemented with EnvironmentContoributorAction.
But pipeline (aka. workflow) doesn't work with EnvironmentContributorAction (Please also see JENKINS-29537).

Possible solutions in future:

• Pipeline supports EnvironmentContributorAction
• Copyartifact provides an alternate way for pipelines to detect the build from where artifacts are copied.
  • I don't know much about pipelines, and don't know an appropriate solution.

Related
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/jenkinsci-dev/1644147.f1qsRL37a5%40linux

So is this issue that you cannot access the 'COPYARTIFACT_BUILD_NUMBER_SUFFIX' environment variable from within a pipeline build at all, or that if you are using the CopyArtifact plugin within a pipeline job to retrieve from another pipeline job, then the environment variable is not available?

I would love this feature. For pipelines/workflows, couldn't you just store it into a local variable rather than an environment variable? Similar to how this plugin works.

In the meantime, we get around this by uploading a file in the source job called `buildNumber.txt` (generated by `sh "echo ${env.BUILD_NUMBER} > buildNumber.txt"), then using the `StatusBuildSelector` in the destination job to download the file from the last successful (or stable) build. Then `readFile` into a local variable.

This is actually the feature i'm looking for. I want to get the build number in a (declarative) pipeline job.

Any ideas how to do that without modifiying the artifacts in the source job as supposed by Andrew, about three years later?

unfortunately, COPYARTIFACT_BUILD_NUMBER_XXX is still not set.

Maybe the following snippet helps?

        stage("Get artifacts") {
            copyArtifacts filter: artifactsToCopy,
                        projectName: upstreamJob,
                        fingerprintArtifacts: true,
                        selector: specific(buildNumberToUse),
                        target: 'artifacts_in/'

            def upstreamJobHttpPath = upstreamJob.replaceAll("/", "/job/")
            httpRequest url: 'http://frinavci01.strykercorp.com:8080/' + upstreamJobHttpPath + '/' + buildNumberToUse + '/api/json', outputFile: 'output.json'
            def jsonFileContent = readFile(file: 'output.json')
            def data = readJSON text: jsonFileContent
            def buildNumber = "${data.number}"

            currentBuild.description = "7z #${buildNumber} -> ${nameOfCartToDeployTo}"
        }