Posts

Introduction The recent addition to Azure DevOps of the StringList parameter type can be really useful to dynamically create parallel stages or jobs in an Azure DevOps YAML pipeline. A StringList parameter can be used to present a list of values to the user queuing a pipeline run, thus allowing the selection of one or more values that can be accessed using a YAML expression loop. This can be combined with YAML templates, where the StringList is passed into a template as an Object. Noting that you can’t use the StringList type for a parameter type in the template definition. However, this is not a problem as there is a dynamic conversion from StringList to Object e.g. ...

A while ago I posted about starting to use Home Assistant. This has been working well for monitoring our SolarEdge PV and Battery system, controlling if we should charge the battery with cheap overnight power if there has not been enough sun to fully charge the battery. Bitten by the Home Assistant bug, I decided I wanted to add more sensors to the systems, so bought some cheap Zigbee equipment from AliExpress ...

Note that this is a repost of my LinkedIn article of the same name The changing face of DevOps Over the years the style of DevOps consultancy I have done has changed, along with its name. Changing from the simple ‘source control’, to SDLC, then ALM to now DevOps. Back in the days of Team Foundation Server (TFS), I used to do a lot of on-premise installs and upgrades. Getting our customers up and running, and helping them improve their adoption of the tools. ...

I have recently done a couple of streamable events with our friends at Grey Matter. Both are now available to enjoy on demand: Grey Matter Talks Tech podcast ‘Inside GitHub: The Platform Powering Open Sources Grey Matter’s on-demand Webinar ‘Inside the Developer’s Toolkit’ with JetBrains and SmartBear If these sort of subjects are on interest, why not come to an in person event? I am speaking, as may other great speakers including my colleague Andrew Wilson, at Grey Matter’s Tech Summit in London on the 24th of September, and best news of all it is free. ...

The Problem I recently rebuild my trusty Lenovo X1 Carbon laptop. As you usually find, a fresh install of Windows 11 meant a leap in performance. All was good for a couple of weeks, until I started to get problems. It still was working to supply power and the HDMI connection to my external monitor worked, but the USB devices could not be seen. I also checked with the Lenovo Dock Manager and it could now no longer see the dock. ...

The Problem The GitHub ‘Azure Pipelines’ App enables some really interesting ‘better together’ scenarios mixing the usage of Azure DevOps Pipelines for CI/CD processes while your source is stored on GitHub. It is particularly useful if an enterprise is migrating towards GitHub Enterprise over a period of time, maybe using GitHub Enterprise Importer (GEI) to do the migration. I was recently working on such a migration for a client that involved numerous Azure DevOps organisations. In the past someone had setup the GitHub ‘Azure Pipelines’ App on their GitHub organisation and got it working with one of their Azure DevOps organisation. ...

The Issue In Azure DevOps Pipelines there is a feature to dynamically configure the build number e.g. at the top of a YAML build add the following to get a version in the form 1.2.25123.1 name: $(major).$(minor).$(year:YY)$(dayofyear).$(rev:r) Major & Minor are user created and managed variables Year, Dayofyear and Rev are built in Azure DevOps pre-defined variables. The first two are obviously based on the current date, the rev is the number of times a pipeline has been run on the current date. The problem is that there is no equivalent feature to name in GitHub Actions as build names/numbers are not really a thing in Actions. ...

Introduction Over the years, I have been involved in numerous migrations of TFS/Azure DevOps Server from on-premises servers to the cloud hosted Azure DevOps Services using the Microsoft Azure DevOps Data Migration Tool. As long as you carefully followed the instructions, the process was relatively straightforward. I was recently involved in a cloud migration of a set of non-English Azure DevOps Servers i.e. the Azure DevOps Servers had been installed in French not English. Migrating these servers to Azure DevOps Services proved a challenge. ...

Introduction I got asked today by a client if there was a way to automate the exporting Azure DevOps Test Plans to Excel files. They knew they could do it manually via the Azure DevOps UI, but had a lot of Test Plans to export and wanted to automate the process. The Options I considered a few options: TCM CLI - This is a command line tool that can be used to interact with Azure DevOps Test Plans. It can be used to import or clone Test Plans, but not to export them. AZ DEVOPS CLI - This is a command line tool that can be used to interact with Azure DevOps. Unfortunately, it does not have any commands to export Test Plans. Azure DevOps REST API - This is a powerful API that can be used to interact with Azure DevOps, but the documentation makes no mention of a call to export Test Plans. But….. ...

There has been much talk at the Microsoft Build conference of the new agentic world, where you get AI agents to perform tasks on your behalf. This could be in your Enterprise applications, but also in the DevOps process that you use to create these new AI aware applications. This can all seem a bit ‘in the future’, but it is a future that is arriving rapidly, and one that will make for a seismic change in what it means to be in a development team. ...