Introduction to Azure DevOps Pipelines
Welcome to the introductory tutorial for Azure DevOps Pipelines. This guide will provide you with a foundational understanding of what Azure Pipelines are, why they are essential for modern software development, and how they fit into the broader Azure DevOps ecosystem.
What are Azure Pipelines?
Azure Pipelines is a cloud service that you can use to automate building, testing, and deploying your code to any cloud or on-premises. It integrates seamlessly with Azure DevOps Services and can be used with GitHub or any other Git repository.
Key Benefits
- Continuous Integration (CI): Automatically build and test your code whenever changes are committed to your repository.
- Continuous Delivery/Deployment (CD): Automate the release of your applications to various environments.
- Cross-Platform: Build and deploy for Linux, macOS, and Windows.
- Language and Project Type Agnostic: Works with any language, platform, and cloud.
- Scalability: Leverage Microsoft-hosted agents or set up your own self-hosted agents.
- Flexibility: Define pipelines using YAML or a classic visual editor.
The CI/CD Workflow
A typical CI/CD workflow using Azure Pipelines involves the following stages:
1. Code Commit
A developer commits code changes to a version control system like Git.
2. Build
A pipeline trigger detects the commit and initiates a build. This typically involves:
- Checking out the code.
- Compiling the code.
- Running unit tests.
- Packaging the application (e.g., creating a Docker image, a NuGet package, or an executable).
The output of the build is an artifact that can be deployed.
3. Release (Deployment)
Once the build is successful, a release pipeline can take the artifact and deploy it to one or more environments (e.g., Development, Staging, Production).
This stage often includes:
- Deploying the application.
- Running integration tests or smoke tests.
- Performing automated approvals before deploying to sensitive environments.
Azure Pipelines and Azure DevOps
Azure Pipelines is a core component of Azure DevOps, a suite of services designed to help teams plan, develop, and deliver software faster and with higher quality. It works hand-in-hand with other Azure DevOps services like Azure Boards, Azure Repos, Azure Test Plans, and Azure Artifacts.
Getting Started
To start using Azure Pipelines, you'll need an Azure DevOps organization. You can then connect your Git repository (Azure Repos, GitHub, Bitbucket, etc.) and define your first pipeline. The next tutorials will guide you through setting up your environment and creating your first build and release pipelines.
Let's move on to the Getting Started section to set up your first pipeline!