I'm seeking advice on the following:
In my development shop we support a SASS solution to our customers. We currently have 10 sites that we develop and provide technical support. We're a small team, just 2 of us. We're using Azure DevOps services to host and manage our code, right now we're just using it for a code repo. Within our organization, we multiple projects that represent site. Each site uses the same code base, except the web.config. The web.config is used to change the UI\theme for each customer. When we get a request to create a new site, we first create a new project site and then we copy our code base from the "golden copy" project.
We use a "golden copy" code base to make feature changes and bug fixes. Once we develop a new feature (or fix an issue) to the golden copy, and then we push it to test, QA beings testing. If testing is successful, then the development team copies the entire "golden copy" code files and copies the code to each site project, build and deploy to test for QA to ensure that site works with the new changes . This can be time consuming and prone to errors.
I would like to know the following:
- Is there way in dev ops azure where we merge\copy from our golden
copy to our other site project's repos?
- Can you offer a better way for reorganizing our Organization\Projects
setup based on our current setup\workflow.
Thank you,
As Shayki mentioned, you can consider adopting Git branching strategy. Distributed version control systems like Git give you flexibility in how you use version control to share and manage code.
Keep your branch strategy simple. Build your strategy from these three concepts:
Use feature branches for all new features and bug fixes.
Merge feature branches into the master branch using pull requests.
Keep a high quality, up-to-date master branch.
A strategy that extends these concepts and avoids contradictions will result in a version control workflow for your team that is consistent and easy to follow. For details ,please refer to this official document.
Is there way in dev ops azure where we merge\copy from our golden copy
to our other site project's repos?
For this issue , do you refer to synchronize the changes on the golden copy to other projects' repos? If so, I think it can only be done manually(copy the entire "golden copy" code files to each site project) or clone the entire repo into other projects through the following steps.
In other projects, select the Import repository option:
Related
I am starting up a development team within my organization and we are managing all of our initiatives under a single Azure DevOps Project. To be clear I am trying to avoid using the word "projects" here to prevent confusion with the ADO Project terminology, so I am using "initiatives" in this post...
Over time we expect to maintain a large quantity of initiatives (likely hundreds over time) as we cater to many groups across our company. Some of our initiatives will be highly related to each other but should be managed independently for commit histories. For related initiatives we would prefer to manage them under a single Repo but separated into different folders. For example, we may have a dll that will be heavily utilized by many related plug-in like applications. The dll and plug-in applications would preferably be maintained within the same Repo as sub-repos if possible.
Additionally, there will be many categories of related initiatives which would be hosted in other Repo(s).
My question is what is considered best practice to maintain a large number of initiatives, some related and some unrelated, in Azure Repos? I read some things about Git Submodules but am struggling to figure out how to make/manage distinguished submodules in Azure Repos. Is this the best approach, or is it even possible in ADO? Alternatively is it better practice to utilize independent repos for each initiative, and try to group them via a predetermined naming convention and just call upon multiple repositories in the Pipeline?
Thanks in advance! I am relatively new to ADO.
I agree with mason that submodules can be complicated, it is worth effort
Let us say you are developing web app
You have repository "AwesomeApp" that houses code that needs to compile into production code
You could create repo of utilities "UtilitiesRepo"
This repo will never be public and exist just for your convenience
Under the "UtilitiesRepo", you will have some structure similar to following:
scripts/
development_build/AwesomeApp/
.gitmodules
azure_pipelines.yml
Directory "development_build" will become top level copy of "AwesomeApp" using submodules
At top level of "UtilitiesRepo", .gitmodules will have all information to pull down copy of "AwesomeApp" for build/test purposes
[submodule "AwesomeApp"]
path = "development_build/AwesomeApp"
url = https://dev.azure.com/AwesomeApp
branch = CurrentDevBranch
Populate development_build/AwesomeApp with command:
git submodule update --init
Submodule path 'development_build/AwesomeApp': checked out 'CurrentDevBranch'
Now copy of all files will be in development_build/AwesomeApp/
If "AwesomeApp" needs library, you can add that as submodule since directory development_build is just placeholder for copies of other repos
Just add it as submodule and your "scripts" can access and build/test both:
development_build/AppLibrary/
development_build/AwesomeApp/
In a project I'm planning to have following items/projects:
.Net Server, Ionic App, Angular Website and a C# Admin tool.
At first I made a project, created one repository and folders; Server, App, Website and AdminTool in the root. But as I want to use pipelines and structure my code best possible way, I'm thinking it might have some advantages creating a repository for each project, in my project.
This way I will trigger exactly the pipeline of the project which needs to be build and it might be more module structured.
But I also see the disadvantage of having to push multiple times for the same feature - Each for each involved project (e.g. IonicApp and Server). This way it's not that clear what is made across projects for one feature, which could be seen in one push.
Which way to structure this would you recommend?
Generally, a Git repository on Azure Repos should be no larger than 10GB. This aims to ensure reliability and availability for all customers.
If you put too many projects into one repository, and these projects may also contain some large files, it may dramatically increase the time to checkout, branch, fetch, and clone your code. This could bring you a bad experience with Git. For more details, you can see "Git limits".
So, in your case, maybe you can consider using Submodules.
Create a repository for the main project.
Create a repository for each sub-project.
Set the repositories of sub-projects as the submodules of the main project's repository.
For the source codes of the features that are involved in multiple projects, you also can set up a specific repository for each feature, and then set the feature repositories as submodules of the involved project repositories.
With this way, you can set up the pipeline for each repository. And you also can using the "pipeline-completion triggers" feature when you want the changes in the submodule repositories also can trigger the pipelines for the repositories that is using the submodules.
A separate repository for each project is highly recommended and considered best practice.
With this you will have benefits, like;
smaller sized repos,
every project integration with CICD separately.
Because at the moment you will be updating single app project, so why to bother other running projects
looking for workflow solution. We need something like ad-hoc sharing workflow https://docs.bit.dev/docs/workflows/projects with one addition - before the component publishing could happen only after the code review. let me try to describe the short scenario:
there is a repo with the shared components
there are several consumer projects. each one sits in its own repo
there is no dedicated team to maintain the repo with the shared components
the developer of consumer project imports a share component and make changes
the developer wants to create a pull request for a component changes
So far I see only one solution - the developer manually applies changes he made locally to a shared library repo and manually creates a pull request. Kind of boring. Does the bit.dev provide an automated solution for such case?
While a PR-like feature is still not available in Bit, you can use Git's PR workflow to set up a code review process for components with some automation.
Note this flow can work regardless of the specific workflow your team implements. In this answer, I'll focus on the ad-hock flow, as your team uses.
You'll first need to set up automation on your projects, that when there's a change in component's code, your CI will bit tag && bit export the modified components. This should happen only when a PR is approved and merged to master branch (in Git).
Then using the Git integration feature set up your projects to receive PRs on new versions for components.
With these two setups, this will be the workflow your team can utilize:
Import component to any project and modify.
Submit PR to the project.
Have a peer do a code review.
When change is merged, run bit tag && bit export --eject during CI
Commit and push back changes to package.json to the repo (with a skip-ci flag, per your automation infrastructure).
All projects that use that component get a PR from Bit with the newly available version.
I will update this answer whenever a new feature in Bit improves on this workflow.
as Itay says, you can use the GitHub integration on bit.dev.
But if you want, I create demos projects that show how to use GitHub or Azure CI to integrate the project with Bit, and export new components when code our pushed to master, and also run Bit script on PRs.
https://github.com/teambit/bit-with-github-actions
https://github.com/teambit/bit-with-azure-devops
I hope it will help you.
I have been researching and am trying to figure out the best branching and deployment strategy to accomplish the requirements below. Maybe I’m missing something but it is more complicated than it seems. Ideally, we’d just have one permanent branch, ‘master’, that could have specific commits tagged to mark releases to production.
Our current strategy is based on Git Flow and has permanent branches ‘master’ (only has releases to production) and ‘develop’. The primary thing that complicates using a multiple permanent-branches model is the concept of “promoting” the same build from the staging environment to production. Currently, this needs to be done in a separate source code branch (deployments to staging come from ‘develop’, deployments to prod come from ‘master’).
Tools: Git (VSTS), TeamCity, Octopus Deploy
Requirements (feature and hotfix lifecycles):
All code is reviewed via pull requests (enforced via branch policies)
All code gets deployed to a staging environment for testing
We can quickly go back to any snapshot of code that was deployed previously
If testing is successful, then the same build can be “promoted” from our staging environment to production (no need to build again)
Features accumulate over time before pushing out to production as a single release. Hotfixes have to be able to go through without getting caught up in the "all or nothing" next regular release.
I like the idea of having one permanent branch with tags (re: The master/develop split is redundant, http://endoflineblog.com/gitflow-considered-harmful), but having additional permanent branches may better facilitate deploying to different lifecycles/versions (feature and hotfix) to Octopus.
I have been wrestling with how best to pull this off and I may be over complicating things. Any feedback is appreciated.
It seems you have a number of questions and they are quite broad... I'll add some comments to each of your requirements as a conversation starter, but this whole thread might get blocked by moderators as it is definitely not the style of questions SO was made for.
All code is reviewed via pull requests (enforced via branch policies)
I haven't looked at VSTS for ages, but I'd expect they already support branch policies and pull-requests, so not sure if there's anything you need here other than configure settings in your repositories.
In case VSTS does not support that, you might consider moving to a tool that does e.g. BitBucket, GitHub, etc. Both of these have an on-premises version in case you can't (or don't want to) use the cloud hosted version.
All code gets deployed to a staging environment for testing
You achieve that with setting up lifecycles in Octopus Deploy, to make sure deployments/promotions follow the the sequence you want.
We can quickly go back to any snapshot of code that was deployed previously
You already have source control, so all you need now is traceability from the code that is deployed in an environment, to the deployment version in Octopus Deploy, the build job in TeamCity, the branch and exact commit in your source control.
There's a few things that you can do, to achieve that:
Define a versioning scheme that works for you. I like to use semantic versioning. "Major" and "Minor" versions are defined by the developers, and the "Patch" is the auto-incremented number from TeamCity (%build.number%). Every git push build the code and generates a unique build version (%major%.%minor%.%build.number%)
As part of the build steps in TeamCity, before you compile the code, make sure your source files are patched with the version number assigned by each build, the commit hash from your source control, and the branch name. e.g. if you are using .NET, make sure all the AssemblyInfo.cs files are updated with that version, so that the version is embedded in the binaries. This allows anyone to query the version looking at the properties of the binary files, and also allows you to display the app version on the app itself (e.g. status bar, footer, caption, about box, etc.)
Have TeamCity tag your source control with the version number of every build, so you can quickly see on your source control history. You probably only want to do that for the master branch, though which is what you care about.
Have Octopus tag your source control with the deployment version number and the environment name, so that you can quickly see (from your source control) what got deployed where.
Steps 1 and 2 are the most important ones, really. 3 and 4 are just nice-to-have. Most of the time you'll just open the app in the environment, check the commit hash in the "About", and do a git checkout to that commit hash...
If testing is successful, then the same build can be "promoted" from our staging environment to production (no need to build again)
Again, Octopus Deploy lifecycles, and make sure anything different in each environment is defined in the configuration file of the application, which is updated during the Octopus deployment, using environment-specific variables.
In terms of branch workflow, this last requirement makes it mandatory to merge changes into master (or whatever your "production" branch is) before the deployment lifecycle can begin.
I am looking for alternatives to NWDI (Stands for Netweaver Development Infrastructure by SAP) source control system for developing
Java EE Applications. Primarily because:
NWDI is not DVCS : So developers have to be online to do just about anything.
User Interface: Its very difficult to use and train developers on using this system.
Tracking Changes/Generating Reports: Very limited support for this.
For example I cant find out what projects (Files within the project) have been changed in the last 2 weeks.
Code Review: You can do code reviews, it has a good diff utility. But thats about it, there is no way to attach code reviews to a change request.
Branching and Merging are extremely painful.
However the current system has a few handy features:
Automatic Builds: No need to write any build scripts , everything is built in. So when a new repository (we call it track)
is created it automatically configures the build based on the type of components (Supported by the repository) selected on creation.
A Central Build is triggered whenever a developer commits (Activates the changes). Irrespective of the status of the build the changes are now inflicted on the entire team.
Automatic push to Central Test Server: While creating a repository you can define all the servers (Central test, QA, Prod). A developer can push his changes by a
click of a button to Central Test Server. Again everything is built in and there is no need to extend any hooks like you have to do in Mercurial.
I was exploring Mercurial, Kiln and but couldn't find anything helpful. For mercurial Hooks can be used to do the same but I guess some customization effort is required.
Are there any cool DVCS like Mercurial which does the above 2 as well or is it something that I have to customize to make it work?
I don't know of a DVCS proposing everything build-in.
The only alternative (not DVCS, but with some of DVCS characteristics in it) is Rational Team Concert or RTC (free for up to 10 developers).
With a DVCS alone, the usual setup for CI and reviews is:
Git
Gerrit (review)
Jenkins (scheduler)
See "Using Gerrit Git Review with Jenkins CI Server"
Looks like there nothing useful out of the box. I am going to try out Kiln as it appears to be easy to use and try customizing it.