If at all possible, how can one define a custom source for the "Where is your code" selection in Azure DevOps?
Purely for example, say I wanted to use GitLab as my source. Given that no current extensions exist in the marketplace that do this, how could someone go about defining one that adds a custom source for Azure DevOps Pipelines?
While it is true that one could store the pipeline definition in one location and use a "checkout" task to clone the code itself, such a technique causes some functionality to be lost (build status reporting, for example).
Additionally, while using "Other Git" allows one to connect to any git repository, it has its own issues:
You would need to create a custom service connection per repository. This is not sustainable given a large number of repositories.
You still will have the issues found when storing the pipeline definition in one place and checking out a specific repository: loss of build status reporting, PR/merge decoration, etc.
I have looked around Microsoft's documentation websites, as well as the various repositories like the Azure DevOps Task Lib, but I have not found anything that even states if this is possible.
Update Feb 17, 2020
As per the answer below, this is not possible today (Feb 17, 2021). I have opened a corresponding User Voice idea: Custom code sources for Azure DevOps Pipelines
how can one define a custom source for the "Where is your code"
selection in Azure DevOps
For this issue, I am afraid that this is currently not possible in azure devops. If you want to select a custom code source for the pipeline, then you cannot avoid creating gitlab service connections. Currently azure devops only provides the option "Other Git" to choose from.
As a workaround , you can try to create repository mirroring. Repository mirroring allows for mirroring of repositories to and from external sources. It can be used to mirror branches, tags, and commits between repositories.
Push: for mirroring a GitLab repository to another location.
In addition, you could add your request for this feature on our UserVoice site , which is our main forum for product suggestions.After suggest raised, you can vote and add your comments for this feedback. The product team would provide the updates if they view it.
Related
Working on a relatively new team in a much larger organization, and as a side project I am looking at our current documentation for opportunities to improve/standardize our best practices/standards. The ideal tool we would like to use, if up to the task, is Azure DevOps Wiki (this is AZDO Service, not Server) since it lines up with the rest of our PM functions. I was doing some digging, and I have not found much in the way of resources/templates/guides that can really get you going for Azure DevOps Wiki.
Beyond general documentation best practices, is there any helpful tricks/resources that we can use to make the most out of that particular tool? Or is there just a better tool we should consider? Looking for ideas! Any feedback is appreciated.
What I am looking for is a library of templates/resources that could
be used to help standardize documentation.
Official doesn't provided any template or resources for standard. There has been a feature request here:
Make it possible to create wiki page based on a template
You can upvote this feature request of Azure DevOps and share your ideas.
But since the DevOps wiki is designed based on Azure DevOps repository, you can clone the template you want to your wiki repository.
The repository url of your wiki should be:
https://dev.azure.com/<Organization Name>/<Project Name>/_git/<Project Name>.wiki
Use this command to clone the wiki repository:
git clone https://<Personal Access Token>#dev.azure.com/<Organization Name>/<Project Name>/_git/<Project Name>.wiki
PS:
Every DevOps project has a hidden repository, which named '<Project Name>.wiki', this repository can't be access via the repository UI list, also can't be listed via the List Repositories REST API. This repository also unable to be managed as other common repositories. Only 'Security for Wiki'. The repository will store all of the information in the pages of wiki permanently unless you delete the file in the repo.
And the comments section of the wiki is implemented quite differently, it is not based on a git repo and does not provide an explicit manage method. If you accidentally delete an image in a comment from the wiki, you won't have any way to get it back.
A few years ago, our team made the full transition to Azure DevOps. Before that, we had a mixture of on-prem TFS and Subversion but went to the Azure DevOps as it was easier to maintain project status between our developer and BA teams. At that time, for each project the team was working on, we just created a new "project" in Azure DevOps, but over the course of the past few years, we have found that using that method doesn't lend itself to helping us track metrics across all of those projects. We also see that maintaining multiple, separate backlogs is not ideal as we have developers spread across multiple sprints at the same time in different projects without a single place for the team leads or scrum master to fully know what their team members are working on in a single day.
Now, we've made use of queries, but those only go so far, so we've made the decision to merge our projects into a single "project". My scrum master and I have been looking at Naked Agility's merge tool, as outlined in this link: https://blog.devopsabcs.com/index.php/2019/06/12/one-project-to-rule-them-all/.
Has anyone used this tool and how well did it work for you? Also, are there any other options for merging projects together as this tool seems really complex (which the developer states is the case).
Azure DevOps: Merging two projects together
Sorry for any inconvenience.
I am afraid merging projects into a project is currently not supported in azure devops.
There is a Under Review user voice about make it possible to move a Team Project between Team Project Collections.
Merging two projects is not a simple task, it contains not only source code, build/release history, workitems and other watch outs were mainly around access and security:
External API integrations such as Web Apps, Function Apps, JIRA, Service Now
External inbound app authorisations
External outbound app authorisations such as Azure Service Principals
Variable Group authorisations to YAML Build Pipelines
Library reference updates including KeyVault
etc
This refactoring ended up being much more work than the code merge itself.
Besides, there is a Azure devops extension Migration Tools for Azure DevOps, which allow you to migrate Teams, Work Items, and Plans & Suits from one Project to another in Azure DevOps/TFS both within the same Organisation, and between Organisations. Watch the Video Overview to get you started in 30 minutes. This tool is complicated and its not always easy to discover what you need to do.
Hope this helps.
My company creates a lot of projects in Azure DevOps, and they all have the same structure -- same members, same permissions. Each project has different Git repositories within it, but that's the only thing (other than the name) that differs between them. It would be helpful to have a template so that everything is set up correctly each time we need a new one.
I don't see a way to do this through the web interface. I have the sense that I could probably do it with a script, but I don't know where to begin with that (including which tool to use). Where should I start?
It looks like there is now a way to do this without the Azure DevOps CLI (as long as your project that you want to template is one of the supported types (Agile, Scrum and Basic)). There is a tool available here that will step you through the process.
There is also an excellent blog post here that gives you an overview.
Yes, you can accomplish most of the configuration by script. For the beginning you might take a look at the Azure Devops CLI, which allows you to perform several actions on Azure Devops, like:
Create projects, Users and configure security
Create repositories, pipelines and set branch permissions
Create and manage work items
...
I have got a project in an old org (from VSTS), that I want to move to my new one.
I can't see any options in Azure DevOps on migrating projects, or any information on the interwebs.
Anyone know how to do it?
If you just need to move repos, you can use the built in clone functions:
Go to the Azure Devops source repo -> Files
Click "Clone"
Choose "Generate Git Credentials"
Create the target repo in the target Azure DevOps
Choose "Import a repository"
Use the URL and credentials from Step 3
Done
This is not supported today. But this feature was planned to develop: make it possible to move a Team Project between Team Project Collections
If your Azure Devops project only tracks code versions using a single Git repo, hence no boards, user stories, tasks, pipelines, etc. then you can do the following:
Clone your project repo.
For example with Visual Studio.
You don't need to clone if you already have a local repo.
Destroy the association with the remote.
For this typically, you need to open a command line prompt in the folder that contains the .git database folder, most likely the solution folder of Visual Studio and type git remote rm origin.
Here is an example using git bash showing the content of the solution folder, including the .git database and the *.sln Visual Studio solution file:
Open the solution with Visual Studio if not already done.
It should now show that you have many commits waiting to be pushed to a remote. For illustration purpose, my toy project only have 8 commits in total.
Click the up arrow and choose your new remote, say a brand new Azure DevOps project, in the organization of your choice, then push.
You are now done cloning the project in another organization. If needed, then destroy the project in the old organization to complete the "move" operation.
There are 3 projects that I know of to achieve this.
A paid for option by Ops Hub -
OpsHub Visual Studio Migration Utility
An open source tool that requires making changes to the work item process template - Azure DevOps Migration tools
An lastly an Unofficial but still written by Microsoft tool to create Azure DevOps project templates - Azure DevOps Demo Generator & extractor tool
With the last one (the Demo Generator) you extract the project as a template, then apply it to the new organisation. As it is a tool for demo's there is no support provided and in my experience it works for simple projects but falls over on anything complex.
Expanding on others' answers, this post regards Pipelines.
Azure DevOps API
Migrating nearly all aspects of a project across organizations is doable, but it is a lot of manual work using the Azure DevOps API. The link below shows you all the end points, variables, etc. From there you'll probably want to write a Power Shell script and do a couple test runs to a dummy Organization.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/azure/devops/?view=azure-devops-rest-6.1&viewFallbackFrom=azure-devops-rest-6.0
In App options
If you avoid the API, there is no way to migrate pipelines that preserve build or release history, but you can preserve your configurations and processes by going into your Pipelines and selecting View YAML. From here you can either take this away as notes to recreate the GUI steps in your new org/project location, or actually adopt the YAML standard in your git repository.
I do not believe there is a way to migrate pipeline variables outside of the API. However, you can move the variables to Azure Key Vault and change your pipeline settings (YAML) to reference values from key vault. This is not a large amount of effort and is a nice process improvement.
Lastly, if you have any locally installed pipeline agents for releases, you will need to run the Power Shell script for your new organization on the boxes. Very simple 5m step, but right now the Agent Pools are not sharable across organization.
As #Frederic mentioned in his answer, we can actually easily do it with Visual Studio. I have done this without Visual Studio. The steps involved are below.
Add a User to Both Organization
Configure SSH Key
Update the SSH Key in Source DevOps and Clone the Repository
Check out all the Branches and Tags
Update the SSH Key in the Destination DevOps
Remove Old and Add New Origin
Push all the branches
The commands and detailed explanations can be found here.
BTW, if you need to change the entire Devops Organization tied to your personal Tenant (E.g. VS Enterprise Subscription) and move it to new Tenant, you can change the AAD and point it to the new one e.g. your EA Tenant on Azure commercial cloud.
Before you switch your organization directory, make sure the following statements are true:
You're in the Project Collection Administrator group for the
organization.
You're a member or a guest in the source Azure AD and a
member in the destination Azure AD
You have 100 or fewer users in
your source organization. Otherwise you will have to open a support ticket.
You may have to add the users back in destination org if they do not exist becuase they will loose access the moment you switch the AAD.
you could just download as a zip file and then download it to the destination repo
Please elaborate the steps to create a workflow of Visual
Studio Team Services and Github.
Integration of Github with VSTS and creating a workflow.
Once we create user stories in vsts, is there any way to create a
transition from one state to another(New->Active->resolved),
based on repository update(github).
There is a way to transition from on state to another when github repo is update:
Create a CI build definition for the github repo.
Add a power shell task to change the stories state.
But usually user stories are linked with repo on VSTS not github, that’s more useful and meaningful.
Automatically is only using VSTS git repo.
If you like update this, you need to create a manual integration, possible using the VSTS Rest Api.