Controlling Pull Request Source Branches for Given Target Branch in Azure Git Repos

Generally you can create pull request from any given source branch to a any given target branch in Azure Git repos. You can setup a pull request validation build which evaluates the repo state, by performing a pre merge in the build server to ensure, your repo build succeeds after the pull request is merged to the target branch. You can set the branch policies so that the pull request cannot be merged to a given target branch if the validation build fails or if the approvers not approve the pull request. However, you might want to follow a branching strategy, which requires you to control from which branches a pull request can be created and merged to a targeting branch. The purpose of controlling the pull request source and target would be to assure your team is adhering to a defined branching and merge strategy. Let’s look at using a task in pull request validation build to ensure the request is coming from an allowed/valid branch, and make the build to fail if it is coming from an invalid branch.

Join a Personal Azure DevOps Organization to a Company Domain

You might have started using Azure DevOps using Microsoft accounts. Later you may have established a company and may want to move the current Microsoft account based Azure DevOps organization to work with your company active directory users. Let’s look at the steps required to join a personal Microsoft account based Azure DevOps organization to a company domain.

Azure DevOps Service Connection for an Azure Subscription in Another Azure AD

Adding Azure Subscription to Azure DevOps  as service connection is really simple when you have the same account you are using for Azure DevOps associated with your Azure Subscription. However, this may not be the case always and you may want to deploy to resources in a Azure Subscription which is not related to your Azure DevOps organization. Let’s see how to create a service connection in such situation to utilize it in a deployment pipeline.

Setting a Release Variable to Make It Available to Other Stages in Azure DevOps Release Pipeline

You can easily set a variable in a build or release pipeline by executing “##vso[task.setvariable variable=variablename;]variablevalue” . This sets the variable for the scope of a given stage in a release pipeline. However, it does not allow you to set a variable in the scope of a release. That means if you want to set a variable value in stage and then use it in subsequent stages it is not possible to do it with  ##vso[task.setvariable . Let’s look at achieving this need using Azure DevOps REST API.
The script available here can be used for this purpose. A slightly modified version of the script to support release pipeline and enable sending any variable name and value for updating a value of a given variable can be found here.

Getting Started with Azure DevOps Command Line

Using command line to work with Azure related resources can be done easily using Azure CLI. Now there is an extension to Azure CLI allowing you to work with Azure DevOps. Let’s have a quick look at how to get it setup and use it for few operations.

Copying a Build Definition to Another Team Project in a Different Azure DevOps Organization

You can easily clone a build and create a new build definition in the same team project. This is useful when you have similar type of applications to be built. However, if you want to clone a build definition to another team project, or for that matter to a different Azure DevOps Organization, you cannot use the clone as it always creates it in the same team project. For task groups you can use import and export to get them copied over to a different team project or even to  a different team project in a different Azure DevOps organization. Let’s look at how to export and import a build definition from a team project into a different team project in a different Azure DevOps organization.

Pull Request Report for Azure Git Repos

When you have several repos in your team project and if you want to obtain a report of pending pull requests, or even completed pull requests, you can use widget available here in your dashboards.Additionally pull request count widget also available in here. Individual repo based pull request dashboard widget also available in Azure DevOps. However, if you want a custom report, you can use REST API and create your own report.

Deploying ASP.NET Core App to Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS)–Setting Up Azure DevOps Pipeline Manually–Step By Step Guide–Part 2

In the part 1 of this post, enabling Docker support for ASP.NET Core app and building and pushing the Docker image to Azure Container Service, using Azure DevOps build pipeline with simple steps was described. The image is tagged with the build Id and it is pushed to the Azure Container Registry, so that it can be later deployed to a container orchestrator to run the container. Helm is used to get he deployment done to AKS via Azure DevOps when creating a an ASP.NET Core App, Container Registry and AKS, then getting it deployed automatically with few clicks using Azure Projects as described in the post “Deploy ASP.NET Core App to AKS with Azure DevOps Project”. Let’s look at getting the container image in Azure Container Registry deployed to AKS with three simple steps without using Helm, with Azure Pipelines.