Deploying to Azure – part 1, Creating a build pipeline

Ever since I started using Azure Devops for source control, I always looked at Azure hosting as a scary monster! It looked huge and menacing. I would think of it as a great tool for someone who spends many hours learning all the ins and outs of it.
However having since deployed my first website to Azure web app hosting, I find myself looking at Azure in a new way. It can be used even on a very small scale, without much knowledge of the wholesome feature it can provide.

For future reference, and for anyone else this may help; I’ll be documenting my experience over a few posts of how it went.

First stop is Devops to create a build pipeline.

I went to Pipelines and hit ‘New Pipeline’ to create my build line. My code is stored in DevOps so I selected ‘Azure Repos Git’. Selected my project and configured it using ASP.NET.
This created a basic YAML file (stands for ‘Yet Another Markup Language’), from which the build will run.

trigger:
- master

pool:
  vmImage: 'windows-latest'

variables:
  solution: '**/*.sln'
  buildPlatform: 'Any CPU'
  buildConfiguration: 'Release'

steps:
- task: NuGetToolInstaller@1

- task: NuGetCommand@2
  inputs:
    restoreSolution: '$(solution)'

- task: VSBuild@1
  inputs:
    solution: '$(solution)'
    msbuildArgs: '/p:DeployOnBuild=true /p:WebPublishMethod=Package /p:PackageAsSingleFile=true /p:SkipInvalidConfigurations=true /p:PackageLocation="$(build.artifactStagingDirectory)"'
    platform: '$(buildPlatform)'
    configuration: '$(buildConfiguration)'

- task: VSTest@2
  inputs:
    platform: '$(buildPlatform)'
    configuration: '$(buildConfiguration)'

I hit the ‘Save and run’ button to see if it would work, and as you guessed – it failed. The reason it failed was, I am using a NuGet package from Telerik which is on a subscription and therefore needs login details to be able to use it. Since I hadn’t given DevOps access it failed.

I followed this post [Azure DevOps and Telerik NuGet Packages] to add an Azure secret with the Telerik login details. It is very easy to follow, with one point that needs mentioning:
When adding the secrets to the pipeline, it must be added before any build is set. Otherwise the build will fail. Whilst this should seem blindingly obvious it took me a few tries to realise it.

The final YAML included another task (I included it the first thing after steps – line 12):

- task: DotNetCoreCLI@2
  inputs:
    command: 'restore'
    projects: '$(ProjectName)/$(ProjectName).csproj'
    feedsToUse: 'config'
    nugetConfigPath: 'NuGet.config'
    externalFeedCredentials: 'Telerik Feed'

Once that has been done the build should all run smoothly (assuming of course the code builds).

In part 2 we’ll take a look at getting started with Azure hosting.