What are Azure Pipelines?
The Azure CI/CD pipeline simplifies continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) in the application development process. You can start from the source stage with existing code on GitHub or on-premise containers.
The Azure Repos can maintain a central repository, and the Azure pipelines maintain build and release pipelines for the given project. The Azure DevOps CI/CD process is a crucial process with all the required dev services.
Apart from continuous integration and continuous deployment with Azure DevOps, these pipelines are used to construct build-deploy-test workflows used mainly in continuous testing (CT). This tests the changes in a fast and scalable routine.
Continuous Integration (CI):
Continuous integration is all about finding and fixing bugs as soon as possible. CI helps in finding underlying or overlooked issues and bugs in the code in the initial stages of development, making bug-fixing faster as they can be fixed easily and quickly in the early stages. Furthermore, developers will always know about the errors, and can even give a glance to code through version-controlled repositories. With continuous testing and compilation of code, the entire integration process becomes faster, enhancing the overall productivity of the team.
Continuous Delivery (CD):
Continuous delivery is all about boosting the delivery process and making sure that every policy is followed, each test is performed effectively, and the code is deployed in the right environment. Moreover, it integrates the code with infrastructure and assists the developers in fixing bugs, making essential changes in the code, and adding new features as well. With all these actions, CD ensures that bug fixes are delivered faster, and the overall risk related to release is reduced to a maximum extent so that software delivery can become faster and more feasible.
Advantages of Azure Pipelines
The Azure Pipelines can be multifactored, and in the Azure DevOps CI/CD practice, they provide various advantages:
1. Version Control Systems — Having the code in a version control system is the first step of building an Azure CI/CD pipeline. You can manage your source code in GitHub, Bitbucket, Subversion, or any other Git repository. It also supports Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC).
2. Programming Languages and Application Types — You can use different languages with Azure pipelines like Java, Ruby, C, C++, Python, PHP, Go, and JavaScript.
3. Deployment Targets — The applications with Azure CI/CD pipelines can be deployed to multiple target environments. This includes Virtual Machines, Containers, or any On-prem or Cloud Platform.
4. Package Formats — To produce packages that can be consumed by others, you can publish NuGet, npm, or Maven packages to the built-in package management repository in Azure Pipelines. You also can use any other package management repository of your choice.
5. Pricing — It is free for public projects. But, for private projects, you can run up to 1800 minutes of pipeline jobs free per month.
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Why should I use Azure Pipelines?
Implementing CI and CD pipelines helps to ensure consistent and quality code that’s readily available to users. And, Microsoft Azure cloud service Pipelines provides a quick, easy, and safe way to automate building your projects and making them available to users.
Use Azure Pipelines because it supports the following scenarios:
● Works with any language or platform
● Deploys to different types of targets at the same time
● Integrates with Azure Deployments
● Builds on Windows, Linux, or Mac machines
● Integrates with GitHub
● Works with open-source projects.
