Azure Dev ops

 What is Azure DevOps?

Azure DevOps is a Software as a service (SaaS) platform from Microsoft that provides an end-to-end DevOps toolchain for developing and deploying software.  It also integrates with most leading tools on the market and is a great option for orchestrating a DevOps toolchain. 

What can Azure DevOps do?

Azure DevOps comprises a range of services covering the full development life cycle. 

• Azure Boards: agile planning, work item tracking, visualization and reporting tool.
• Azure Pipelines: a language, platform and cloud agnostic CI/CD platform with support for containers or Kubernetes.
• Azure Repos: provides cloud-hosted private git repos.
• Azure Artifacts: provides integrated package management with support for Maven, npm, Python and NuGet package feeds from public or private sources.
• Azure Test Plans: provides an integrated planned and exploratory testing solution.

Azure DevOps can also be used to orchestrate third-party tools.

What is Azure Repos?

Azure Repos is a set of version control tools that you can use to manage your code. Whether your software project is large or small, using version control as soon as possible is a good idea.

Version control systems are software that help you track changes you make in your code over time.

Azure Repos provides two types of version control:

·       Git: distributed version control

·       Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC): centralized version control

Git

Git is the most commonly used version control system today and is quickly becoming the standard for version control. Git is a distributed version control system, meaning that your local copy of code is a complete version control repository. These fully functional local repositories make it is easy to work offline or remotely. You commit your work locally, and then sync your copy of the repository with the copy on the server.

Git in Azure Repos is standard Git. You can use the clients and tools of your choice, such as Git for Windows, Mac, partners' Git services, and tools such as Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code.

TFVC

TFVC is a centralized version control system. Typically, team members have only one version of each file on their dev machines. Historical data is maintained only on the server. Branches are path-based and created on the server.

In summary, Git is a distributed version control system that allows users to work locally and provides a flexible and powerful way to manage code changes, while TFVC is a centralized version control system that requires a connection to a central server and operates on a check-in/check-out model.

Why use version control?

Without version control, you're tempted to keep multiple copies of code on your computer. This is dangerous, because it's easy to change or delete a file in the wrong copy of code, potentially losing work. Version control systems solve this problem by managing all versions of your code but presenting you with a single version at a time.

Version control systems provide the following benefits:

• Create workflows - Version control workflows prevent the chaos of everyone using their own development process with different and incompatible tools. Version control systems provide process enforcement and permissions, so everyone stays on the same page.
• Work with versions - Every version has a description for what the changes in the version do, such as fix a bug or add a feature. These descriptions help you follow changes in your code by version instead of by individual file changes. Code stored in versions can be viewed and restored from version control at any time as needed. This makes it easy to base new work off any version of code.
• Code together - Version control synchronizes versions and makes sure that your changes don't conflict with other changes from your team. Your team relies on version control to help resolve and prevent conflicts, even when people make changes at the same time.
• Keep a history - Version control keeps a history of changes as your team saves new versions of your code. This history can be reviewed to find out who, why, and when changes were made. History gives you the confidence to experiment since you can roll back to a previous good version at any time. History lets you base work from any version of code, such as to fix a bug in a previous release.
• Automate tasks - Version control automation features save your team time and generate consistent results. You can automate testing, code analysis, and deployment when new versions are saved to version control.

There are plenty of things that can take up your time as a developer: reproducing bugs, learning new tools, and adding new features or content. As the demands of your users scale up, version control helps your team work together and ship on time.

Team Foundation Version Control

TFVC is a centralized version control system. Typically, team members have only one version of each file on their development machines. Historical data is maintained only on the server. Branches are path-based and created on the server.

TFVC lets you apply granular permissions and restrict access down to a file level. Because your team checks all its work into Azure DevOps Server, you can easily audit changes and identify which user checked in a changeset. By using compare and annotate, you can identify the exact changes that they made.