Tag: build

How to Leverage the Strength of Branch Policies

Create branch policies to tie your branch, pull requests, and build into a powerful automated experience

Branch policies can act as a sort of glue to combine a branch, a build, and pull requests. Many options are available to you when configuring branch policies. First, make sure you require a pull request. Next, you’ll need to create a build in Azure DevOps to leverage when configuring a build policy.

Make sure you have at least one reviewer:

Require a minimum number of reviewers for pull requests
Require a minimum number of reviewers for pull requests

Pull Requests are required and at least one approval is needed to complete them.

A build policy can be added too. Let’s do that. Click the Add build policy button and fill in the form:

Add build policy
Add build policy

The build pipeline is specified. The trigger should be Automatic. The build should be required and have an expiration. Give your build policy a name that describes its purpose. In this case, I called it Develop-Build-Policy.

Now, let’s look at other configuration options. One option is to Limit merge types. I will choose Squash Merge to help keep my Git history clean. I’ll also add myself as an automatically included code reviewer.

Branch policies setup
Branch policy setup

With a build policy added, we have an automated build set up to run after a pull request is created. When a feature branch needs to merge to develop, a pull request is required. When a pull request is created, the automated build will run. The pull request cannot be completed (which would cause a merge to the develop branch) until it receives approval from at least one required approver and the automated build succeeds.

Pull Request Policy status
Pull Request Policy status

Assuming the in-progress build succeeds, I could approve this pull request which would allow it to complete. After completing the pull request, the code in my feature branch would merge to the develop branch.

How to Create Build Pipelines in Azure DevOps

How to create build pipelines in Azure DevOps

DevOps has been a Huge advantage when creating enterprise software but, even small projects can benefit from DevOps. This article will describe how to create build pipelines in Azure DevOps.

DevOps is the union of people, process, and technology to continually provide value to customers.

Microsoft, What is DevOps?

Microsoft’s Azure DevOps can make it super simple. It not only includes source code repositories and a superior bug tracker. Leverage powerful pipelines to build and deploy applications. They can be configured to trigger a build on each code repository check-in. Azure DevOps makes it a simple process to leverage continuous integration options for small projects.

First, you will need to set up your branch in Azure Repos. Not sure how? Check out the previous post about how to require pull requests in Azure Repos.

Create a New Pipeline

We have Azure Repos set up with a master branch and a develop branch. The develop branch requires a pull request. The next thing we’ll do is create a build.

First, we need to create a new pipeline. Navigating to Azure Repos > Pipelines we can see there are no pipelines:

new Build Pipelines in Azure DevOps
New pipeline

Click the New pipeline button to start the process of creating a new pipeline. First is the Connect tab where you need to tell Azure DevOps where your code is located:

Where is your code?
Where is your code?

Select Azure Repos Git for this example since our code is in a Git Repository in Azure Repos.

After the connection is set up, the workflow will move to the Select step where you need to select a repository:

Select a repository
Select a repository

This one is easy for me – I only have one set up. Choose the desired repository. The repository should include the code that you wish to build with this pipeline.

After selecting a repository, you must configure your pipeline. There are a lot of templates available. Here is just a few:

Configure your pipeline
Configure your pipeline

I created a React app and will use the npm tool to run npm scripts. After selecting the tool, the yaml file will display. I made changes to it to support running the necessary npm scripts in my react app:

trigger:
- develop

pool:
  vmImage: 'ubuntu-latest'

steps:

- task: Npm@1
  inputs:
    command: 'install'
    workingDir: '$(Build.SourcesDirectory)/react-app/'

- task: Npm@1
  inputs:
    command: 'custom'
    workingDir: '$(Build.SourcesDirectory)/react-app/'
    customCommand: 'run build-test-ci'

Now click the blue Save and run button to the upper-right. This will display a form:

Save and run a build
Save and run a new build

This will add the azure-pipelines.yml file to the develop branch and run the build.

Azure DevOps Pipelines build in progress
Azure DevOps Pipelines build in progress

Assuming the build succeeds, you have a build that you can leverage in various automation scenarios.