How do I customize the "Pipeline" tab in Azure Devps (Image 1) so that it is renamed to "Builds" (Image 2)?
Rename “Pipelines” to “Builds” in ADO
Sorry for any inconvenience.
This behavior is by designed and is not an issue. There is no way to fix it at present.
Azure devops team working on an updated user experience to manage our pipelines. These updates make the pipelines experience modern and consistent with the direction of Azure DevOps.
Moreover, these updates bring together classic build pipelines and multi-stage YAML pipelines into a single experience. It is mobile-friendly and brings various improvements to how you manage your pipelines.
You could check the document Azure DevOps Pipelines – Multi-Stage Pipelines and YAML for Continuous Delivery for some more details.
Since Multi-Stage Pipelines and YAML for Continuous Delivery introduced, Builds are no longer just a single build as before, but also include the CD part. At this time, Builds are no longer suitable as tabs, so they are changed to Pipelines.
This is a modification of product update progress.
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Our team uses Azure Dev Ops for our source control and release pipelines. The release pipelines are not included in our source control and are created through ADO UI. These can be very complex; I exported one release and it was 7500 lines of json. I would like these pipeline definitions to be in the same source control as our source code for easy maintenance and review.
I see that there are tools for exporting the pipeline definition to json and an option in the UI to create a pipeline by importing json. Is there a pattern to use automation to leverage these import/export functions and have a pipeline that is updated based on the definition in my repo?
We are currently just using the UI to update the pipelines without any additional version control or review controls. I'm expecting some functionality like GitHub Actions where the pipeline definition is contained within the repo and automation picks up the files.
If you want to version control your pipelines, I suggest that you start using the yaml pipelines that exist in Azure Devops.
These can handle both build and release pipelines. The "Releases" tab in the GUI becomes obsolete, as all pipelines (both build and release) instead show up in the "Pipelines" tab. For release pipelines, use the deployment job type, which gives you access to automatic artifact handling and environment management.
Edit: So to answer the actual question, I do not know any way to version control the GUI (classic) pipelines. My strong recommendation is to migrate to yaml pipelines.
I'm wondering about the wiseness of using only Azure Boards without using Azure Repos (we use another Git service) and without Azure Pipelines (our CI/CD is defined somewhere else). Specifically, I am having trouble seeing how to define releases and mark work items as belonging to a specific release, because the doc seems to point that it would be done naturally using Azure Pipeline Builds and Releases.
I suppose we can just manually add tags to work items to specify which release they belong to, but that would mean no release dashboard/report to monitor release development.
Is it possible to use Azure Boards without handling build/deployments in Azure Pipelines without greatly reducing the usability of Azure Boards regarding release management, and how?
Option 1 - integrations
This depends on the specific service you use. For example, you can use Azure DevOps Boards and GitHub repo: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/boards/github/?view=azure-devops.
However, the number of integrations is quite limited.
Option 2 - calling DevOps API
Tag the work items by calling the Azure DevOps API in your pipelines (wherever the pipelines are running, as long as they can call an API). E.g. to update tag on a work item:
PATCH https://dev.azure.com/fabrikam/Fabrikam-Fiber-Git/_apis/wit/tags/18090594-b371-4140-99d2-fc93bcbcddec?api-version=6.0-preview.1
{
"id": "18090594-b371-4140-99d2-fc93bcbcddec",
"name": "my-first-tag",
"url": "http://dev.azure.com/fabrikam/Fabrikam-Fiber-Git/_apis/wit/tags/18090594-b371-4140-99d2-fc93bcbcddec?api-version=5.1-preview"
}
source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/azure/devops/wit/tags/update?view=azure-devops-rest-6.0&tabs=HTTP
I have Azure YAML pipelines that have been created long back and I am now looking into migrating my existing devops solutions form Azure to Github Actions.
How do I approach migrating / translating existing pipelines from Azure DevOps to Github Actions?
Manually translating each ADO Pipeline is not something that would be consider a feasible solution for the number of pipelines I have.
Reference Links:
Azure DevOps Pipelines: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/yaml-schema/?view=azure-pipelines
Github Actions: https://docs.github.com/en/actions/using-workflows/workflow-syntax-for-github-actions
Simply put: I need to convert my existing ADO pipelines to Github Actions
I am thinking of building a tool to serve this purpose of converting Azure DevOps pipelines to Github Actions but need ideas on how to approach this problem.
From Leo Liu's answer, May 2022:
I am afraid there is no such out of box extension or tool to batch Convert Azure Pipelines YAML to Github Actions YAML at this moment.
Update:
Introducing GitHub Actions Importer (Nov. 2022)
We’ve launched a public preview of GitHub Actions Importer, which helps you forecast, plan, and automate migrations from your current CI/CD tool to GitHub Actions.
Doing individual migrations is relatively easy in isolation.
However, for those that have a large and established CI/CD footprint, having tooling available to assist with migrations is key to their ability to adopt Actions at scale.
In the time that we’ve been developing and using GitHub Actions Importer in its private preview form, we’ve encountered numerous customers that have thousands of pipelines—even in excess of 15K—in their legacy environments that need to be migrated.
GitHub Actions Importer is designed to help when manual migration is not feasible, such as when users have a large number of teams that depend on hundreds or thousands of workflows.
To learn more, see Automating migrations with GitHub Actions Importer and the announcement post on the GitHub blog.
Sign up here to request access to the public preview.
So check it out: it does list Azure DevOps in its Supported CI platforms.
How to Batch Convert Azure Pipelines YAML to Github Actions YAML?
I am afraid there is no such out of box extension or tool to batch Convert Azure Pipelines YAML to Github Actions YAML at this moment.
There is a tool to make migrations between Azure Pipelines YAML and GitHub Actions YAML easier for one YAML file at a time:
Convert Azure Pipelines YAML to GitHub Actions YAML
But the tool for batch convert doesn't seem to exist yet.
I create a multi-stage pipeline in YML file including build stage and deployment to dev, test and production.
I ant to have a dashboard to show me the status of deployment and which release version was deployed to each stages?
I check the "Deployment Status" widget, but it only work with release option.
So anybody has experience to support me?
I am afraid that there are no out-of-the-box widgets to display the stages of the YAML pipeline and the status of each stage on the azure devops dashboard. Currently, the Release Pipeline Overview widget accomplishes this but it cannot be linked to a YAML pipeline.
Until now, in our official feature suggestion for Azure Devops forum, there has been a such suggestion exist in it: ADO Dashboard Widget-Release Pipeline Overview should support YAML Pipelines. You can add your vote directly at the above linked feedback. Voting helps increase the priority of the suggestion by consolidating customer impact under one feedback. The product team would provide the updates if they view it. Thank you for helping us build a better Azure DevOps!
Here is a ticket with similar issue.
I created a new pipeline in Azure DevOps, and created a new branch for it.
As a result, DevOps automatically committed the YAML file for the new pipeline to my 'development' branch.
None of the other pipelines I've created have YAML files committed into the repo...
Why does it do this?
Do we have to keep the YAML file there?
It has nothing to do with the source code of the application, so doesn't seem to make sense why its stored there.
YAML is code for how your application is deployed, thus it is part of the source code. By putting it under source control it can keep track of version changes and any additional changes to parameters or variables that are determined or inserted in the build process.
This is opposed to the older ways of doing things where it was updated via UI and not source control and did not have peer reviews, branching merging, and additional polices that can be applied.
This on top of the the YAML Pipelines for Releases going GA the other week will make YAML under a repo even more powerful as the YAMLs will not only build but also release code.
In Azure Devops Service we define pipelines using the YAML syntax or through the user interface (Classic). So there're two kinds of pipelines, Yaml pipelines and Classic UI(Classic build and release) pipelines.
None of the other pipelines I've created have YAML files committed
into the repo...
Why does it do this?
It's expected behavior when defining pipelines using Yaml syntax: The pipeline is versioned with your code. It follows the same branching structure.
And one advantage for this is: A change to the build process might cause a break or result in an unexpected outcome. Because the change is in version control with the rest of your codebase, you can more easily identify the issue.
To sum up, the yaml pipeline will be added into version control and it's by-design behavior. If you don't want this behavior, you can feel free to use Classic Build and Classic Release pipelines. It's also a good choice! About the differences between these formats you can check Feature availability. Hope it helps :)