Azure Pipelines Tutorial

Introduction to Azure Pipelines

Azure Pipelines is a cloud service that you can use to automatically build and test your code project and make it available to other users. It works with just about any language or project type.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have the following:

• An Azure DevOps organization. If you don't have one, you can create one for free at https://dev.azure.com.
• A repository with your source code. This can be in Azure Repos, GitHub, GitLab, or other Git repositories.

Step 1: Create a New Pipeline

To create a new pipeline, follow these steps:

1. Sign in to your Azure DevOps organization and navigate to your project.
2. In the left-hand menu, select Pipelines.
3. Click on the New pipeline button.
4. Select the location of your source code repository. For example, if your code is in GitHub, click on GitHub.
5. Follow the prompts to authenticate and select your repository.
6. Select the pipeline configuration. You can start with a predefined template or configure your pipeline manually.

Here is an example of a simple YAML pipeline configuration:

trigger:
  - main

pool:
  vmImage: 'ubuntu-latest'

steps:
- script: echo Hello, world!
  displayName: 'Run a one-line script'

Step 2: Configure Pipeline Steps

In Azure Pipelines, steps represent individual tasks in the pipeline. You can add various steps to build, test, and deploy your application.

Here is an example of adding a build step for a Node.js application:

steps:
- task: NodeTool@0
  inputs:
    versionSpec: '10.x'
  displayName: 'Install Node.js'

- script: |
    npm install
    npm run build
  displayName: 'Install dependencies and build'

Step 3: Running the Pipeline

Once you have configured your pipeline, you can save and run it. Azure Pipelines will automatically trigger a build when changes are detected in the specified branches.

To manually trigger a build, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the Pipelines section in your Azure DevOps project.
2. Select the pipeline you want to run.
3. Click on the Run pipeline button.

After the pipeline runs, you can view the results in the pipeline's summary page.

Step 4: Adding Continuous Deployment

Continuous Deployment (CD) can be set up to automatically deploy your application after a successful build. You can configure CD pipelines to deploy to various environments like development, staging, or production.

Here is an example of adding a deployment step to an Azure Web App:

- task: AzureWebApp@1
  inputs:
    azureSubscription: ''
    appName: ''
    package: '$(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)/**/*.zip'
  displayName: 'Deploy to Azure Web App'

Conclusion

In this tutorial, you have learned how to create, configure, and run an Azure Pipeline. You also learned how to add steps for building, testing, and deploying your application. Azure Pipelines is a powerful tool that can help you automate your DevOps processes and improve your development workflow.