Visual Studio Team Services - VSTS in few word
GitHub is great. I have a GitHub account and I'm planning to share all source code for this blog on GitHub, especially that public repoes are free on GitHub.
But I also have a Vsts account, well to be honest a few of them for different purposes, but in the end one is my main directory and others are just for fun, experiments or other strange stuff.
Why I don't have all in GitHub? Vsts has no capacity restriction on it's content so I can have everything there, and the most important detail is that Vsts is free and it is private. No one not-invited can see my code collection, and not all code should be public. I also store file like old emails that felt right to be archived somewhere, or some documentation file related to very old projects like my master thesis (this really should not be seen by public anymore :D ). This is my private space for all my code at least since 2012.
More about Vsts you can read here
Vsts is an Application Life cycle Management tool it means that its not only a code repository (it's GIT repository now a days) but also work management, bug trucking, testing, and Continuous Integration/Delivery tool.
I will be talking a lot about CI/CD in Vsts for me it's sometime life-saving tool and I want to tell this story. In free version there is 240 minutes to spend in hosted build agent. It's quite enough for personal use or learn. It can be updated to payed pipeline or you can use external build agent. There is one free slot for external build agent. If there is some unused machine that can be a build machine use it. If you have msdn subscription and azure access virtual machine is nice solution. The most convenient is payed pipeline - you have access to hosted fully configured and always working build machine for 40$ per month and a slot for another build agent eg. some old mac.
Vsts is living product. Every 3-4 weeks there is new version deployed and available right away. It's nice to look at release notes from time to time to keep up with changes. If you want stable environment you need to go back to TFS. And if you need anything that is not included in Vsts yet you can find it in Vsts MarketPlace.
At the beginning I can recommend two extensions
- Vsts-Tools I use this extension almost always, it helps with all the variables and it's values.
- ExportImport Build Definition. This tool enables exporting and importing build definitions, it's nice for backup, but it's also useful when sharing knowledge. It's always easier to see something working not on screenshots, so I will try to share all my definitions.
But I also have a Vsts account, well to be honest a few of them for different purposes, but in the end one is my main directory and others are just for fun, experiments or other strange stuff.
Why I don't have all in GitHub? Vsts has no capacity restriction on it's content so I can have everything there, and the most important detail is that Vsts is free and it is private. No one not-invited can see my code collection, and not all code should be public. I also store file like old emails that felt right to be archived somewhere, or some documentation file related to very old projects like my master thesis (this really should not be seen by public anymore :D ). This is my private space for all my code at least since 2012.
More about Vsts you can read here
Vsts is an Application Life cycle Management tool it means that its not only a code repository (it's GIT repository now a days) but also work management, bug trucking, testing, and Continuous Integration/Delivery tool.
I will be talking a lot about CI/CD in Vsts for me it's sometime life-saving tool and I want to tell this story. In free version there is 240 minutes to spend in hosted build agent. It's quite enough for personal use or learn. It can be updated to payed pipeline or you can use external build agent. There is one free slot for external build agent. If there is some unused machine that can be a build machine use it. If you have msdn subscription and azure access virtual machine is nice solution. The most convenient is payed pipeline - you have access to hosted fully configured and always working build machine for 40$ per month and a slot for another build agent eg. some old mac.
Vsts is living product. Every 3-4 weeks there is new version deployed and available right away. It's nice to look at release notes from time to time to keep up with changes. If you want stable environment you need to go back to TFS. And if you need anything that is not included in Vsts yet you can find it in Vsts MarketPlace.
At the beginning I can recommend two extensions
- Vsts-Tools I use this extension almost always, it helps with all the variables and it's values.
- ExportImport Build Definition. This tool enables exporting and importing build definitions, it's nice for backup, but it's also useful when sharing knowledge. It's always easier to see something working not on screenshots, so I will try to share all my definitions.
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