Heroku and Gitlab have Preview Apps as part of their CI/CD pipeline. Which is great for trunk based development as you get to test the branch in an isolated environment before merging the PR to master. Is there a way to do this in Azure DevOps? Could you use a custom Agent for this? How would you do that?
Our stack has React (client), .NET Core (api), MS SQL Server (storage). What I would like to add to our CI/CD pipeline is Preview App which can be used as QA step and we could also run our E2E Cypress tests against it.
Currently our devs have to run E2E tests locally as part of our PR process. For QA step we have to merge the PR to the master so that it will get deployed to our development server. Since QA works against our master branch we are forced to use release branches. After QA approves the merged PR, it's then cherry-picked to release branch. Release branches are then build and deployed automatically.
I would like to add QA step to our PR process so that we could deploy straight from master. Now we get it done, but I would like to streamline the process even more.
Related
I am implementing a gitflow workflow with master and development branches, and I have 3 environments: DEV, UAT, PROD.
Using Azure DevOps, when the PR completes and the feature branch is merged into development, I trigger the release to DEV environment.
I am unsure on how to deploy to UAT after that. My first approach was to automate the deployment to UAT after the deployment to DEV succeeded (sequentially, DEV and then UAT), but it doesn't feel right to automate the deployment to UAT.
Should I create another branch for UAT deployments, and automate the deployment to UAT when development merges into that branch?
It's not need to have a branch for each environment. You should promote the artifact, not the source code. A specific branch should be integrated with the CI process, and its artifact should be promoted through each stage until production. The Continuous Delivery pipeline should reflect the environment stages, not the branch model.
A useful blog for your reference:
https://medium.com/#grazibonizi/understading-the-connection-between-branching-models-and-delivery-pipeline-c9cb12e30516
I'm using Azure DevOps as the source code repo for my Docker containerized Angular application. In the process of creating release pipelines to deploy the code base from dev to test (then to staging and prod) I noticed that after selecting the Azure App Service deployment template, I could not specify a branch for code movement.
For example, I could not specify the dev branch for the pipeline that would move code to the test environment. Does this mean that for containerized apps I have to have separate repos for each environment: dev, test, staging, and prod? Further, does this mean that for code deployment that I would have to move, let's say, code from the master branch in the dev repo to the master branch in the test repo, and so on?
As with any other CI\CD pipeline what happens is the following:
you build your code
you test it
you package it
you release it
I guess you miss the fact that you create an artifact and then you release it to dev > staging > prod. In other words you promote it across environments.
As for moving the code between branches - yes, thats what you have to do anyway. Unless you want your branches to be disconnected completely between each other (which makes very little sense).
I am setting a CI/CD pipeline on Azure devops.
This one gets executed when a Build for the master branch is completed.
I was asked to set the stages of the image above, which description is the next one:
Development, QA and Production : Publish the build artifacts on a server (each one).
Testing: Execute some automated test with katalon studio.
My problem is that, when I create a Development branch this pipeline cannot be executed for the build, because the pipeline is just executed when I commit to the master branch, then I create another CI/CD pipeline for Development branch, remove Development stage from Master CI/CD pipeline and incorporate it in this new pipeline.
My question is... is that correct ? , what´s the best estrategy for git branching when you have this kind of pipelines?
My problem is that, when I create a Development branch this pipeline
cannot be executed for the build, because the pipeline is just
executed when I commit to the master branch, then I create another
CI/CD pipeline for Development branch
For this issue, you don't need to do that. You only need to add the Development branch to the Branch filters of Continuous Integration in build Triggers.
Then add the Development branch to the Build branch filters of the Continuous deployment trigger.
After this setting, when you commit to development branch, build and release pipeline will also be triggered.
We have dozens of code repositories in Azure DevOps, and we're working on a major release strategy.
We have a stable development branch called develop, where code has been tested and peer-reviewed, with features approved by QA. All of our service repositories have a similar structure.
We want to "click a button" and branch from develop across all our repositories to a release candidate branch, that QA can regression test as a complete system... basically a "snapshot" of what we expect is ready for release. We would then build from this code base, release to our QA environment from the corresponding builds, and when certified, deploy to production, then smoke test and merge the release candidate branch into master, then master back into develop.
It doesn't seem like there's an easy way to manage multiple builds or releases in Azure DevOps though. Atlassian's Bamboo supported this concept of "meta builds" but I don't see a way to do this in Azure DevOps. I can't seem to even create a build that is not implicitly linked to a single repository.
How can I automate this and get this workflow working in Azure DevOps?
You can use a Build Task from the Marketplace that queue a new build: the first two found are Trigger Build Task and Build Chain.
You defined an overarching build that queues the single ones and does any additional work.
Using the Delivery Pipeline service, I'd like to deploy my artifacts to staging/QA environments where QA/Product team members can test features/defect fixes before those changes get merged into Production branch.
How would I spin up these temporary testing environments when pull requests are created?
There is currently no way to build off of pull requests. One option would be to have a separate branch that people can merge code into. You can then have a build stage which builds that branch and a deploy stage to deploy to your staging/qa environment. You can then have another stage will does the merge into the production branch. (Note, this stage should only be triggered manually.)