Azure Pipeline

An Azure Pipeline is a cloud-based CI/CD (Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery) service provided by Azure DevOps. It automates how you build, test, and deploy your applications.

What Azure Pipeline Does

• Continuous Integration (CI)
• Automatically builds your code whenever you push changes.
• Runs automated tests.
• Ensures your code is always in a working state.

Continuous Delivery/Deployment (CD)

• Deploys your application to environments like:
• Azure App Service
• Virtual Machines
• Kubernetes (AKS)
• On-prem servers
• Ensures fast and reliable deployments.

Key Features

Runs on Microsoft-hosted or self-hosted agents

Supports multiple languages & platforms: .NET, Java, Python, Node.js, Go, Docker, Kubernetes

YAML-based pipelines (automation as code)

Integration with GitHub & Azure Repos

Approval gates and release workflows

Pipeline Types

1. YAML Pipeline

Defined in a .yaml file inside your repo.

Example:

trigger:
- main

pool:
vmImage: 'ubuntu-latest'

steps:
- task: DotNetCoreCLI@2
inputs:
command: 'build'

2. Classic (GUI) Pipeline

Created using the Azure DevOps UI with drag-and-drop tasks.

Why Use Azure Pipelines?

Some of the uses of the Azure pipelines are as follows:

• Automates repetitive tasks
• Improves code quality
• Speeds up deployment
• Works across teams
• Highly scalable and secure