Preface

Continuous integration (CI) is the practice of using automated tools to compile automatically and continuously, based on changes made by developers to source code, and packaging and testing them to ensure they are stable and able to provide the expected functionality.

Continuous delivery (CD) uses the artifacts created via CI and deploys those applications without human intervention to end users, ensuring these are always updated with the latest versions and, in most cases, performing additional verifications in multiple environments before reaching the final end users.

All of this is possible by taking advantage of Azure Pipelines, one of the leading platforms to support all aspects of the software development life cycle (SDLC); however, in this book, we will focus on the CI/CD aspects and how to take advantage of the features available to effect the different task automation options under the DevOps umbrella, even touching on the DevSecOps aspects.

In this book, we provide you with the tools to get started, by learning the basic concepts and building from there to more complex scenarios. This will lead to end-to-end scenarios that enable your software development teams with the tools to automate, every step of the way, the delivery of applications, from source code to a running platform.

Who this book is for

From beginners to the most advanced users, anybody looking to better understand how to take advantage of Azure Pipelines can benefit from this book.

The three main personas who are the target audience of this content are as follows:

• Software developers: They will learn how they can automatically build and deploy their software products, regardless of the target platform, at very early stages to speed up the SDLC
• DevOps engineers: They will learn how Azure Pipelines can support any automation need, no matter the stage in the process, infusing quality and checks every step of the way
• Security engineers: They will learn how they can integrate their tools in the CI/CD process to enforce security and quality at the beginning of the build and deployment process

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Understanding Azure Pipelines, provides an introduction to CI/CD, Azure DevOps, Azure Pipelines, and its components. It explains why an Azure pipeline is the right choice for certain cases, introduces other services under Azure DevOps such as Azure Repos, and guides you through setting up a new project, setting up a self-hosted agent, preparing a pipeline environment, and configuring agent pools and deployment groups.

Chapter 2, Creating Build Pipelines, teaches you how to create and manage pipelines, stages, jobs, tasks, triggers, and artifacts in Azure DevOps, as well as about running pipelines after code pushes to Azure Repos.

Chapter 3, Setting Variables, Environments, Approvals, and Checks, covers the creation of service connections, variable groups, secret files, and release pipelines in Azure DevOps. It also explains setting up service accounts for Azure Repos and GitHub connections. Additionally, you will learn about securely storing secret keys and using environments, with approvals and checks for stage progression control.

Chapter 4, Extending Advanced Azure Pipelines Using YAML, helps you to understand how to use YAML to create a build and release pipeline. It discusses in detail what the YAML syntax is to create stages, jobs, and tasks for web application deployment.

Chapter 5, Implementing the Build Pipeline Using Deployment Tasks, explores how to create and reuse a build task for the building process. This chapter covers the popular Node.js, NPM, .NET, Docker, and SQL Server deployment tasks using the YAML syntax.

Chapter 6, Integrating Testing, Security Tasks, and Other Tools, helps you understand how the extensibility of Azure Pipelines with other tools works. This chapter covers the popular tools SonarQube for code analysis and Jenkins for artifacts.

Chapter 7, Monitoring Azure Pipelines, teaches you how to monitor Azure Pipelines and related tasks, such as build tasks, deployment tasks, and pipeline agents. You will also learn how to build monitoring into pipelines to determine whether deployments improve or degrade the quality of a system.

Chapter 8, Provisioning Infrastructure Using Infrastructure as Code, examines how to create and reuse deployment tasks for the Infrastructure as Code (IaC) process. This chapter covers the popular IaC tools Terraform, Azure Bicep, and an ARM template using YAML syntax.

Chapter 9, Implementing CI/CD for Azure Services, shows you how to create the YAML and pipelines for Azure service deployment. You will learn how to set up and deploy applications on Azure App Service, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure Container Apps, and Azure Container Instances (ACI).

Chapter 10, Implementing CI/CD for AWS, explores how to create YAML and pipelines to deploy containerized applications on different services such as AWS Lightsail, Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), and Elastic Container Service (ECS).

Chapter 11, Automating CI/CD for Cross-Mobile Applications by Using Flutter, dives into how to create a pipeline using YAML to automate the CI/CD of a mobile application build and release process. You will also learn how to implement YAML pipelines to deploy Flutter on Apple TestFlight and the Google Play Console, staging the environment of an end-to-end process.

Chapter 12, Navigating Common Pitfalls and Future Trends in Azure Pipelines, teaches you about common mistakes and suggests how to avoid them. This chapter also looks at potential future trends in Azure Pipelines.

To get the most out of this book

You will need to have a basic understanding of building and deploying applications with automation; however, this book will walk you through how this is done in Azure Pipelines. Each chapter has specific technical requirements.

Software/hardware covered in the book	Operating system requirements
Docker	Windows, Linux, or macOS
Visual Studio Code	Windows, Linux, or macOS

If you are using the digital version of this book, we advise you to type the code yourself or access the code from the book’s GitHub repository (a link is available in the next section). Doing so will help you avoid any potential errors related to the copying and pasting of code.

Download the example code files

You can download the example code files for this book from GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Implementing-CI-CD-Using-Azure-Pipelines. If there’s an update to the code, it will be updated in the GitHub repository.

We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

Code in text: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: Add the following basic script – echo "Hello Second Task on Linux".

A block of code is set as follows:

{
  "$schema": "https://schema.management.azure.com/schemas/2019-04-01/deploymentTemplate.json#",
  "contentVersion": "",
  "apiProfile": "",
  "parameters": {  },
  "variables": {  },
  "functions": [  ],
  "resources": [  ],
  "outputs": {  }
}

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

$id=az ad sp list –display-name azure-pipelines –query "[].id" -o tsv

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see on screen. For instance, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in bold. Here is an example: “Start by clicking the Environments option under Pipelines in the main menu.”

Tips or important notes

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Get in touch

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