Integrate with DevOps / ALM lifecycle
Overview
This tutorial describes how to work with Visual Studio Team Services. It describes how to create a project, upload the source code of a local project, and compile and build the project automatically through a build agent in Azure. After you finish the tutorial, you’ll have a project in Visual Studio Team Services, with source code that’s available in a source code controller, and an automatic build that’s available to use.
The following illustration shows Visual Studio Team Services with the project added:
You’ll learn these procedures:
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How to prepare your machine for Azure development by installing the Azure SDK for .NET
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How to create a project in Visual Studio Team Services
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How to upload the source code to the source code controller in Visual Studio Team Services
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How to add a build agent in Azure
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How to add a build to Visual Studio Team Services to compile and build the code
Sign up for Microsoft Azure
You need an Azure account to complete this tutorial. You can:
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Open an Azure account for free. You get credits that can be used to try out paid Azure services. Even after you use the credits, you can keep the account and use free Azure services and features, such as the Web Apps feature in Azure App Service.
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Activate Visual Studio subscriber benefits. Your Visual Studio subscription gives you credits every month that you can use for paid Azure services.
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Get credits every month by joining Visual Studio Dev Essentials.
If you want to get started with Azure App Service before you sign up for an Azure account, go to Try App Service. You can immediately create a short-lived starter web app in App Service, with no credit card required and no commitments necessary.
Set up the development environment
To get started, set up your development environment by installing the latest version of the Azure SDK.
If you don't have Visual Studio installed, use the link for Visual Studio 2015. Visual Studio will be installed along with the SDK.
Sign up for Visual Studio Team Services
Create your Team Services account:
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If you want to get started quickly and need minimal control over who can access your Team Services account, sign up with a Microsoft account.
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If you need more control over who can access your Team Services account, sign up with a work or school account.
After you’ve created your team project, you can connect your development tools and add code for your app to the cloud. You can also create work items to start planning your work.
- Sign in to Visual Studio Team Services with your Microsoft account or work/school account.
If you have a Visual Studio subscription that includes Team Services as a benefit, use the Microsoft account that’s associated with your subscription.
Give your account a name that’s easy to remember. Then choose which version control provider you want to use to manage your code.
- Not sure which to choose? Find the version control provider that works best for you.
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- Confirm your account location.
The default process template that’s used to manage your work is the Agile template. Can I change the account location or process template?
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Create a new project in Visual Studio Team Services
After creating your account in Visual Studio Team Services, you will see a panel that displays a summary of your projects. Since this is a new account, you won’t have any projects.
To create a new project, select the New project button:
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Fill in the fields, such as name and description, with the project information. Then choose a template and version control provider.
You can change the template and the version control provider later if necessary. However, it’s a good idea to choose them carefully at first, because it requires extra work to change them later.
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After you create the project, it’s available on your panel. When you access it for the first time, a new page displays a summary of the project (which won’t have any information in it yet, since the project is new). This panel can be customized to improve the developer experience.
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Add code to the project
To add your code to the newly created project in Visual Studio Team Services, and to keep it in a version control provider in the cloud, you need to connect the project to Visual Studio 2013 or Visual Studio 2015.
To do this, go to the Team Explorer tab. Then select the Visual Studio Team Services server that you just created. You’ll be connected to the project in Visual Studio.
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When you use Git as the source code manager, you have to clone the project locally for it to start working. Select Close this repository in the window that automatically opened in the Team Explorer tab, and then indicate where you want to put the local repository.
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After you place the project in a local repository, you can put a
solution in the repository for upload to the cloud. You can also include
all the solutions that are available on the GitHub
demo , as shown during
the Microsoft Connect ();
//2015
conference. To do this, select Open ..., and then indicate the
location of the solution.
You can also add new solutions by selecting New …. This opens a
window where you can select what type of new solution you want.
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After the solution is in the local repository, you can upload the code to the source code provider if you want to have this code in the cloud. To do this, go to the Changes screen, and then select Commit. To upload this commit to the repository, go to the Synchronization screen, and then select Push.
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You can verify that the code has been submitted by checking it in Visual Studio Team Services:
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Add a build agent to Azure
It’s possible to generate a build automatically. You can generate a build every so often, when an event occurs, or when a branch of the repository is updated. It saves time to generate automatically builds.
With this you can check that your code works on another machine.
You do this on the Build tab.
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It’s important to note at this point that Visual Studio Team Services also has a default build agent that’s useful for small projects or projects that have few dependencies. This step that you’re taking now is only necessary for projects that have external dependencies, or that are too large for the default agent.
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If necessary, you can also create build agents and agent pools (groups of specialized agents) to manage the builds of individual projects that make up the solution.
This requires a machine that has the tools that are necessary for compiling the project. This machine might be found on-premises or hosted on a server with Azure. This machine needs the following:
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An operating system that supports IDE version development
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The development IDE that performs the compilation
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Windows PowerShell 3.0 or higher
The sample project that you’re developing is a Universal Windows Platform application. You’ll need the following:
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An operating system that supports Visual Studio 2015
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The Visual Studio 2015 Universal Windows Platform application kit
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PowerShell 3.0
Depending on the project, there might be more dependencies. Therefore, you might need an extra machine.
Demo for the Microsoft Connect (); //2015
Before deploying a build agent, ensure that you have administrator permissions for the Agent pools in the Team Services account. For more information, see Agent pools.
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On the machine where you want to run the build agent, open a web browser and go to:
- Team Services:
Or go to
- On-premises:
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Select Download agent.
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Unzip the .zip file into the folder from which you’d like to run the agent. To avoid "path too long" issues on the file system, keep the path short. For example, you can run this command: C:\Agent\
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Open the command prompt as administrator, and then run:
C:\Agent\ConfigureAgent.cmd
- Complete the required information. Then sign in with your Team Services account to complete the configuration.
You have now configured an agent that’s available to perform builds.
Run the agent
The agent can run in two ways:
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Run as a service: Choose this option if you want to deploy the agent as a Windows service and control the status of the agent in Services Explorer. Run services.msc, and then search for VSO Agent <name of your agent>.
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Run interactively: Choose this option if you want to deploy the agent interactively. You can run the agent by launching the Agent\VsoAgent.exe file.
Now the agent is automatically configured in Visual Studio Team Services, and a link to the machine that perform builds will be created. To check that everything is working, go to:
Verify that the machine is registered in the pool of agents that’s listed in the agent configuration on the machine. If it’s there, it means it’s available to generate builds.
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Add a build to compile and deploy the project
Now you can create a build to compile and deploy the project.
As an example, we’ll add one compilation build and deployment for the
Universal Windows Platform application project to Visual Studio Team
Services. Go to the build page of the project in Visual Studio Team
Services. Then select Add new build definition. and select the
Universal Windows Platform template. If you need another template,
there are several available. You can also create your
own.
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Next, a configuration window is displayed. Select the repository (in this case, Microsoft Connect(); //2015 Demo, the master branch). Next, select Continuous integration if you want integration to happen each time the branch is updated a new build is generated. The agent pool that you will use was configured in the previous section.
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Finally, select click on Create.
A new window with information about the build and its various settings are displayed.
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It’s important to select the Save button after creating the definition so that all changes are saved.
If you make any changes in the elected branch, and have opted for continuous integration, the build runs in the background on the machine that you configured in the previous section.
If you need to run a build manually, select the Queue build on the
build definition page.
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Once the build has been run, you’ll see information about the status of the compilation and of previous builds. All of these parameters can be configured.
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To compile and create compilation builds for other solutions, such as the Demo of Microsoft Connect(); //2015, simply add dependencies and build steps for each of them.
Other topics to explore
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Scale out and administer your build and deployment system: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/Library/vs/alm/Build/agents/admin
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Deploy a Windows build agent: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/Library/vs/alm/Build/agents/windows
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Sign up in Visual Studio Team Services: https://www.visualstudio.com/get-started/setup/sign-up-for-visual-studio-online
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Connect to Visual Studio Team Services: https://www.visualstudio.com/get-started/setup/connect-to-visual-studio-online
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Get started with Azure: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/get-started/
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Azure Developer Tools – Learn more about the tools and find recently released installers.