Prevent Checking Out the Repo in CD YAML Pipeline

In the previous post “Trigger Deployment YAML Pipeline Once YAML Build Completed” (https://chamindac.blogspot.com/2020/10/trigger-deployment-yaml-pipeline-from.html) we have discussed how to separate the deployment pipeline from the build pipeline, in Azure DevOps YAML pipeline implementations and to trigger a CD pipeline from the CI build once completed. However, if you check carefully that post implementation of CD it is still checking out the code repository, even though it is not necessary to checkout code being the deployment pipeline. Let’s see how we can avoid checking out repo in the CD YAML.

Developing Azure Functions in Visual Studio and Creating a Deployment Pipeline Using VSTS

Serverless computing has become a hot topic these days. It is providing you with paying only for the actual time your code is running and resources you are consuming without any worries about infrastructure. Azure functions let you build functions that can scale dynamically based on the needs, with a languages of your choice. When you install Visual Studio Azure Development workload you get templates for developing Azure Functions. Let’s look at how to create a simple Azure Function “Hello World” in Visual Studio and most importantly how to get your CI/CD pipeline ready within couple of minutes.

Controlling Octopus Releases with VSTS Release Management

You may be using Octopus deploy for your deployment automation pipeline needs while you are having your builds and work items managed in VSTS. It is a good idea to manage the Octopus release pipeline via VSTS release management so that you have the opportunity to use automated test execution and capturing of test results, as well as easily generate release notes using the VSTS work items, using feature rich tasks and automation test results views in VSTS release management. Let’s look at the important steps required to make VSTS release management to successfully utilize your existing Octopus deploy process steps.

Auto Generating CD Build/Release Pipeline Targeting Azure App Service for MVC Web Application

VSTS allows great flexibility with it’s new web based build and release management features. You have several templates which can be used to create build and release definitions you need quickly. Lots of out of the box tasks allow you to further customize your definitions to support the steps that you need to perform during a build or a deployment. Visual Studio Marketplace is getting more and more components added to it, allowing you to find a task for almost any build deploy step you may require to perform. Taking the steps to the next level, you can now even generate your build/release pipeline with Visual Studio 2017, after adding the extension Continuous Delivery Tools for Visual Studio.

Let’s walkthrough the steps of generating a CD pipeline for an MVC Web Application, to allow it to be deployed to Azure App Service.

Trigger a Release Based on Build Tag– VS Team Services

Visual Studio Team Services now supports triggering a release, in team services release management, when a defined tag is available in a completed build. This helps you to filter a build or builds, to get deployed via the release pipeline, out of builds that are successfully completed.
For example a build that is tagged as RTM, would trigger a release while another build, completed successfully, but with no tag is not triggering a deployment. In order to say a release should only be triggered with a given tag, it should be defined in the Triggers tab of the release definition.