Azure DevOps, GitHub, Or Both?

DevOps has become essential for the success of projects. The DevOps methodology offers many advantages by uniting the forces of the developer (Dev) and operations (Ops) teams, provided that the right tools are chosen. Azure DevOps and GitHub, two collaboration tools owned by Microsoft, are among the most popular! Each offers CI/CD (continuous integration and continuous delivery) capabilities with Azure Pipelines and GitHub Actions. Let’s discover each of these 2 tools.

Azure DevOps

Azure DevOps represents the evolution of Visual Studio Team Foundation Services (VSTS) and then Visual Studio Online (VSTO). Despite the name given by Microsoft to this tool, it goes far beyond the Azure framework: it allows the management of the development of applications deployed on OnPrem environments or other public Clouds such as AWS or Google Cloud as well. 

This SaaS suite offers many tools designed not only for DevOps but also to manage the entire development lifecycle (tasks/bugs/user stories, test plans). Every Azure DevOps service is extensible, allowing it to accommodate any application, regardless of infrastructure, platform, or cloud. It is, therefore, easier to take advantage of the tools already used within the organization. Azure DevOps provides the tools to have a continuous integration and deployment approach that includes:

  1. a Git repository for managing the source code of the application and the infrastructure code ( IaC: ARM/Bicep/Terraform or other models, scripts),
  2. a system of notifications and approvals
  3. a system of links between sources and “work items” (tasks/bugs)
  4. an artifact management system (nuget packages or reusable libraries)
  5. a system of “pipelines” allowing
  6. generation for the production of packages and other deployable or reusable artifacts,
  7. Deployment and installation to development, test, or production environments.

What Are Azure Pipelines?

Within the Azure DevOps suite, Azure Pipelines is a fully dedicated CI/CD service that handles continuous integration and delivery/deployment. This solution allows testing, releasing, and deploying code automatically and provides end-to-end traceability of the software development lifecycle.

Azure DevOps Test Plans

Azure Test Plans are coordinated with Azure Pipelines to help test inside a ceaseless reconciliation/sending ( CI/Compact disc ). Test plans and experiments can be related to constructing or delivering pipelines. To capture and publish test results, specialized pipeline tasks can be added to pipeline definitions. 

Test results can be reviewed through built-in progress reports and pipeline test reports. Thus, developers can integrate their modified code several times a day. The modifications to be merged are automatically tested to detect the slightest conflict between the existing code and the new (at all levels, classes, functions, modules, etc.). Thus, malfunctions are resolved very early, more frequently, and quickly. 

GitHub

A free platform, it allows developers to publish and share, in a completely open manner, the code they have created. Having become one of the most popular sites, GitHub now hosts over 80 million projects: software or software bricks of any type (website, mobile application), regardless of the programming language.

In a collaborative space, everyone can contribute and propose modifications. Discussion spaces also allow exchange around the deposited code. For a developer, existing on GitHub has become a must. A whole community of programmers can work constantly searching for solutions to concrete problems. And these solutions can be directly offered to the public.

What Are GitHub Actions?

One of the features of GitHub is called “Actions.” These actions help automate, customize, and run development workflows directly from the code repository. In particular, it is possible to configure the continuous integration process. Continuous Integration or CI is a build/compile process when modifying or merging new code (pull-request) with a project’s existing code base. 

This approach makes it possible, in particular, to detect bugs early to correct them easily and at a lower cost. GitHub Actions is GitHub’s CI/CD pipeline tool. Open-source, the build does not rely on any specific technology. There is no official online editor for YAML pipeline definitions. We can therefore use any text editor and deploy the updates to the Git repository.

Commonalities Between GitHub And Azure DevOps

GitHub and Azure DevOps have several things in common. First, both offer public and private code repositories to meet the needs of all types of projects. Microsoft is gradually converging the two platforms. GitHub and Azure DevOps integrate various popular tools, platforms, and services. 

These two tools notably integrate with Microsoft Azure. Thus, for example, it is possible to use the security services of this cloud for both platforms. Description of CI/CD pipelines from GitHub and Azure DevOps now use the same YAML syntax. Note also that the two services are also available in a local version (on-premises). These are GitHub Enterprise and Azure DevOps Server. 

What Is The Best DevOps Tool?

Azure DevOps and GitHub simplify communication and improve collaboration and project management for developer teams. GitHub may have an advantage for developers of open-source projects and developers not using any Microsoft software bricks. The functionalities of this platform help to open this project to external contributions. On the other hand, Azure DevOps is ideal for developers of projects that are not open source. Its various tools promote collaboration and communication among all project stakeholders.

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