Azure Devops Build Pipeline for solution with multiple project types

Question

I have a solution that contains the following

• Several Asp.net Projects(Microservices and Gateway)

• .net Core + Angular 8 (Front End)

When i hit the build button in visual studio every project is built.I have created a repo and uploaded the solution.Now i'm trying to figure out how to setup the pipeline to build each microservice and deploy them to individual Azure Web Apps.

I have the following Pipeline for the Angular Project.Should i define separate tasks like this? Is there a way to replicate visual studio build here?

# ASP.NET
# Build and test ASP.NET projects.
# Add steps that publish symbols, save build artifacts, deploy, and more:
# https://docs.microsoft.com/azure/devops/pipelines/apps/aspnet/build-aspnet-4

trigger:
- master

pool:
  vmImage: 'windows-latest'

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

steps:
- task: NuGetToolInstaller@1

- task: Npm@1
  inputs:
    command: install
    workingDir: 'd:\a\1\s\Ok.Web\ClientApp'

- task: Npm@1
  inputs:
    command: custom
    workingDir: 'd:\a\1\s\Ok.Web\ClientApp'
    customCommand: run build

- task: CopyFiles@2
  inputs:
    targetFolder: '$(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)'    

- task: PublishBuildArtifacts@1

Answer 1

You may apply one of two approaches here:

1. One pipeline for whole repo
2. One pipeline for project

In both things you may use templates to avoid reapeting yourself. So you will define common tasks for building .NET project and then use them in pipelines. I made recently blog post about this , but please take a look on documentation too.

To achieve that you need to define first a yaml file with common steps. For instance:

parameters:
- name: buildConfiguration # name of the parameter; required
  default: 'Release'
- name: projectFolder
  default: ' '

steps:

- task: DotNetCoreCLI@2
  displayName: Restore nuget packages
  inputs:
    command: restore
    projects: '*.csproj'
    workingDirectory: '${{ parameters.projectFolder}}'

- task: DotNetCoreCLI@2
  displayName: Build
  inputs:
    command: build
    projects: '${{ parameters.projectFolder}}'
    arguments: '--configuration ${{ parameters.buildConfiguration }}'

# You just added coverlet.collector to use 'XPlat Code Coverage'
- task: DotNetCoreCLI@2
  displayName: Test
  inputs:
    command: test
    projects: '*Tests/*.csproj'
    arguments: '--configuration ${{ parameters.buildConfiguration }} --collect:"XPlat Code Coverage" -- RunConfiguration.DisableAppDomain=true'
    workingDirectory: '${{ parameters.projectFolder}}'

- task: DotNetCoreCLI@2
  inputs:
    command: custom
    custom: tool
    arguments: install --tool-path . dotnet-reportgenerator-globaltool
  displayName: Install ReportGenerator tool

- script: ./reportgenerator -reports:$(Agent.TempDirectory)/**/coverage.cobertura.xml -targetdir:${{ parameters.projectFolder}}/coverlet/reports -reporttypes:"Cobertura"
  displayName: Create reports

- task: PublishCodeCoverageResults@1
  displayName: 'Publish code coverage'
  inputs:
    codeCoverageTool: Cobertura
    summaryFileLocation: ${{ parameters.projectFolder}}/coverlet/reports/Cobertura.xml  

And then invoke this file from you main build file:

variables:
  buildConfiguration: 'Release'
  projectFolder: 'path to your project'

steps:

- template: build-and-test.yaml
  parameters:
      buildConfiguration: $(buildConfiguration)

- script: echo Some steps to create artifacts!
  displayName: 'Run a one-line script'

In approach numer 1 you will build all project even if you change just a one project, so I would recommend you approach number 2. For this you may define multiple pipelines (one per project) and limit trigger to changes in specific folder. Please take a look here .

Here you have an example how you can limit trigger to specific folder for master branch:

trigger:
  branches:
    include:
    - master
  paths:
    include:
    - gated-checkin-with-template/*
    exclude:
    - gated-checkin-with-template/azure-pipelines-gc.yml