Azure DevOps Pipeline in practice

Paweł Majewski — Sat, 15 Mar 2025 21:47:41 +0000

What is Pipeline?

Pipeline is a solution that automatically build, test and deploy an application. We can split Pipeline to (CI) and (CD) Pipelines.

CI – Continous Integration

CD – Continous Delivery/Deployment

CI – helps maintain code quality by catching errors early in the development process.

CD – streamlines the process of delivering code changes to production environments efficiently and reliably.

Use it in practice!

Today, I’ll show you how to use Azure DevOps Pipeline to deploy your application.

To follow this tutorial, go to Azure DevOps and create a new project.

I created a new organization named “pawelmajewskiblog” and a project named “Pipeline example“.

Now, let’s create a sample WebAPI application that we want to deploy using Azure Pipelines.

[WebApiProject - Minimal API] Program.cs

var builder = WebApplication.CreateBuilder(args);
builder.Services.AddEndpointsApiExplorer();
builder.Services.AddSwaggerGen();
var app = builder.Build();
app.UseSwagger();
app.UseSwaggerUI();
app.UseHttpsRedirection();

var startDate = DateTime.Now;
var pipelineVariable = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("pipeline_variable");

app.MapGet("/", () =>
{
    return new { startDate, pipelineVariable };
})
.WithName("GetVersion")
.WithOpenApi();

app.Run();

This application contains one endpoint named GetVersion, which returns the start date of the application (startData) and the pipeline variable (pipelineVariable) that we will set in the pipeline.

Localhost response is presented below.

Push code to the repository

You can add .gitignore file https://raw.githubusercontent.com/github/gitignore/main/VisualStudio.gitignore.

When our repository is ready, we can go to the next step.

Create first pipeline

Go to the

And click “Create Pipeline”.

Select your repository, I’ll choose “Azure Repos Git”

Use the script for pipeline presented below

trigger:
- master

pool:
  vmImage: 'ubuntu-latest'

variables:
  buildConfiguration: 'Release'

steps:
- task: UseDotNet@2
  displayName: 'Install .NET Core SDK'
  inputs:
    version: 8.x
    
- task: DotNetCoreCLI@2
  inputs:
    command: 'restore'
    projects: '**/*.csproj'
  displayName: 'dotnet restore $(buildConfiguration)'

- task: DotNetCoreCLI@2
  inputs:
    command: 'build'
    projects: '**/*.csproj'
    arguments: '--configuration $(buildConfiguration)'
  displayName: 'dotnet build $(buildConfiguration)'

When you save this pipeline configuration file, then pipeline runs automatically for the first time.

When the pipeline finishes its work, you will be notified by email.

We’ll also receive an email when the build fails.

The post Azure DevOps Pipeline in practice first appeared on Software Developer's Tour.

Introduction to Jenkins and Pipelines

Paweł Majewski — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 16:40:30 +0000

What is Pipeline?

Pipeline is a solution that automatically build, test and deploy an application. We can split Pipeline to (CI) and (CD) Pipelines.

CI – Continous Integration

CD – Continous Delivery/Deployment

CI – helps maintain code quality by catching errors early in the development process.

CD – streamlines the process of delivering code changes to production environments efficiently and reliably.

Use it in practice!

Today, I’ll show you how to use Jenkins to create CI for your application.

To follow this tutorial, go to https://www.jenkins.io/doc/book/installing/ and install Jenkins.

Create console application in Visual Studio

Console.WriteLine($"It works");

Push it to your remote repository. You can see an example on https://github.com/MajewskiPawel/app-ci-cd

Use Jenkins!

If your repository is private, you’ll need to add credentials to authorize Jenkins with your Git provider. Navigate to Dashboard -> Manage Jenkins -> Credentials -> System -> Global credentials (unrestricted).

When you click “Add credentials” button choose “SSH Username with private key” in “Kind” field.

“Username” – username or email

“Private Key” -> click “Enter directly“

To add Private Key you need public and private key.

After this, you will find both jenkins and jenkins.pub files in your user directory.

Open jenkins.pub file, copy entire value and paste it in your profile configuration on your git provider (example for GitHub is presented below).

Open jenkins file (without pub extension), copy entire value and paste it in Private Key field in Jenkins credentials configurator.

After saving the form, you should see a list of credentials. Save the ID of the created element because we will need it later.

Create new pipeline

On the main dashboard click “New Item” and add new Pipeline

Below is the script I have created to build previously created application.

pipeline {
    agent any
    
    stages {
        stage ('Git') {
            steps {
                git branch: 'main', credentialsId: 'test-application', url: 'https://github.com/MajewskiPawel/app-ci-cd'
            }
        }
        stage('Restore packages') {
            steps {
                powershell "dotnet restore '${workspace}\\App\\App.sln'"
            }
        }
        stage('Build project') {
            steps {
                powershell "dotnet build --configuration Release '${workspace}\\App\\App.csproj'"
            }
        }
    }
}

Run it!

Click “Build Now” button on the left navigation bar and see the magic.

We can configure Jenkins to synchronize with Git events and our builds can be executed when pull request have been created or when we push something to master branch.

Why are we doing this?

Before I explain, please modify your application code to the presented below.

var z = 
Console.WriteLine($"It works");

and push it to your repository.

Click “Build Now” button again.

If we had it connected to Git events, we would know immediately when our code has failed, right after someone pushed it to the main branch.

Everything we just did is called CI. Not so scary, right :)?

The post Introduction to Jenkins and Pipelines first appeared on Software Developer's Tour.

DevOps - Software Developer's Tour

Azure DevOps Pipeline in practice

What is Pipeline?

Use it in practice!

[WebApiProject - Minimal API] Program.cs

Push code to the repository

Create first pipeline

Introduction to Jenkins and Pipelines

What is Pipeline?

Use it in practice!

Create console application in Visual Studio

Use Jenkins!

Create new pipeline

Run it!

Why are we doing this?