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.
Related
I've recently been working on switching from On premise TFS to Azure DevOps, and trying to learn more about the different pipelines and I think I may have had my Build pipeline do too much.
Currently I have my Build Pipeline do
Get Source code from Repo
Run database scripts/deploy dacpacs
Copy files over to virtual machines that have web application set up already
Run unit/integration tests
Publish the test results
I repeat these steps closely multiple times, one for develop branch, one for current and previous release branch.
But if I want to take advantage of the Releases and Deployments areas what would that really get me?
It looks like it would be easier to say yes this code did make it out to this dev/beta environment.
I'm working with ColdFusion code that includes some .NET webservices within the repo, would I have to make an artifact that zips up the repo and then deploys it, or is there a better way to take advantage of the release pipeline?
It's not necessary to make an artifact that zips up the repo and then deploys it. There are several types of tools you might use in your application lifecycle process to produce or store artifacts. For example, you might use version control systems such as Git or TFVC to store your artifacts. You can configure Azure Pipelines to deploy artifacts from multiple sources. Check the following link for more details:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/release/artifacts?view=azure-devops#sources
So I have a application split in 4 different repositories which all have their own Azure Pipeline build. But the artifacts of these 4 builds are deployed in one release (into one application).
On a check-in (pull request merge) on our development branch in one of the repos, a build for that repo is started. When this build completes, a release is triggered with the newly finished build artifact + 3 older artifacts based on the "Latest from the build pipeline default branch with tags" from the other repos. So always the latest builds from the development (dev) branch.
Now we want to also deploy an environment for every pull request that is created in the different repos, so our business can test a pull request.
I have the release pipeline done (the actual deploying of the environment), but not sure how to select the artifacts correctly. After a build on a pull request branch, I need to start a release with the pull request artifacts from that triggering build + the latest dev branch artifacts from the other 3 builds.
Manually I can start a new release, by default it selects all the dev artifacts, but by hand I can select the correct artifacts for the PR branch and start a correct deployment. But I want to automate (trigger) this.
How can I configure this automated trigger? Could I use tags? Or am I thinking about this in a wrong way?
Edit
I ended up setting this up by using 4 different stages which have different artifact filters. A stage for each artifact. For that artifact we allow dev_* and all other artifacts need to be from dev_. That way the correct stage is triggered for each artifact trigger, selecting the feature branch and dev branch for others.
It is not the ideal solution, because it does require some duplication of code, but by using Task Groups I have been able to minimize this. But for now I don't see a better solution.
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.
We are using trunk based development and we have dev sandbox and production environments in Azure DevOps. We move build from dev to sandbox to production by promoting the builds. After moving build to production if there is an issue is there anything the pipeline i can define to trigger a rollback.
The only other option I can think of is get the last know commit number and trigger a build with that commit number. and let the pipeline take care of the rest. Is this correct is there a better way to do rollback in AzureDevops
Each release is a snapshot of the deployed artifact(s) and variables. The simplest "rollback" is simply to go to the Release Management history for the project, locate the previous release, and deploy it again to replace the newer release. Complications can arise if there are, for example, incompatible database changes.
I am using VSTS build to run a CI build. This build definition is the same for all my git branches (master, develop, features, etc).
I am now trying to implement a deployment pipeline using VSTS release management. I plan to have two distinct release definitions. One for feature branches and one for the more important branches like develop and master. The release definition for feature branches would be more lightweight.
I think this is pretty basic and usual. In fact, that's pretty much what is documented in Microsoft's typical use case for Release Management.
For both of these pipelines, I want to configure them to start automatically using the 'Continuous Deployment' trigger. When I select this trigger, I must select an artifact source.
Unfortunately, an artifact source takes all artifacts (regardless of the branch) coming from a given build definition (my CI build). Since I use the same CI build definition for all my branches, it looks like I can't configure my two release pipelines in 'Continuous Deployment' and still use the same build definition as an artifact source.
Anybody knows how to share the same build definition for multiple release definitions but only start a release for a specific branch? Anybody knows of a way to filter by branch when we define an artifact source?
Configure branch specific release deployment
Go to release management in VSTS
Go to the definition of the release
Go to tab triggers
Add Continuous Deployment trigger
Here you can select a specific branch (for branch)
Availability of feature
This feature is available in VSTS
In the TFS on-premise version it was supposed to be available in version Server 2017.1 but it is still not available in version 2018.1
Currently there is no way in VSTS Release Management to do conditional deployment based on branch.
An alternate would be to create separate BDs for different branches and then configure them as artifact sources for the RDs.
This will also give users a clarity about the artifact from its name itself.