Advancing DevOps Excellence: Unifying Branching Strategy and Resource Template Deployment 

We claim badges:

  • ACDC Craftsman – for practicising development and deployment best-practices

Hello, Developers! We’re thrilled to share an update that marks a significant leap forward in our development workflows. In addition to refining our Git branching strategy, we’ve seamlessly integrated a new Azure Pipeline for Resource Template Deployment. Let’s explore the details of this cohesive development ecosystem: 

Branching Strategy Overview: 

Our branching strategy revolves around creating distinct branches for various stages of development and deployment. Here’s an overview: 

  1. Main Branch: 
  • Represents the production-ready code. 
  • Protected to prevent direct commits. 
  • Only updated through pull requests after rigorous testing.
  1. Development Branch (Dev): 
  • Branches off from Main. 
  • Developers create feature branches based on user stories, bugs, or work items. 
  • Naming conventions: 
  • users/username/description 
  • users/username/workitem 
  • bugfix/description 
  • feature/feature-name 
  • feature/feature-area/feature-name 
  • hotfix/description 

Development Workflow: 

  1. Feature Development: 
  • Developers create branches based on the naming conventions. 
  • Work is isolated in feature branches, promoting parallel development. 
  • Regularly synchronize feature branches with Dev. 
  1. Merge to Dev: 
  • Feature branches are merged into Dev using the “merge squash commit” option in Azure DevOps. 
  • This creates a cleaner and more readable history, grouping related changes. 
  1. Testing on Dev: 
  • Dev serves as the integration branch. 
  • Rigorous testing, including unit tests and integration tests, is performed on Dev. 

Staging Environment: 

  1. Rebase and Fast-Forward: 
  • Once Dev passes all tests, it’s time to merge into the Staging branch. 
  • Use the “rebase and fast-forward” merge type in Azure DevOps. 
  • This keeps the commit history linear and ensures a clean transition to the staging environment. 
  1. Staging Testing: 
  • Staging serves as a mirror of the production environment. 
  • Conduct thorough testing in the staging environment to validate the deployment readiness. 

Azure Functions CI/CD: 

  1. CI/CD pipeline for Azure Functions ensures swift deployment of updates. 
  1. Real-time communication capabilities are maintained at the forefront of efficiency and reliability. 

Unified CI/CD Ecosystem: 

Building upon our recent achievements in Git branching strategy and Azure Functions CI/CD, our focus has expanded to create a unified CI/CD ecosystem that seamlessly incorporates both application and infrastructure deployments. 

Azure Resource Template Deployment: 

Here’s an overview of the latest addition to our arsenal: 

Pipeline Creation: 

  • A dedicated Azure Pipeline has been crafted to handle the deployment of Azure Resource Templates. 

Purpose: 

  • This pipeline is purpose-built to automate the creation and updates of Azure services based on Resource Templates. 

Conclusion: 

The synergy of our refined Git branching strategy with the new Azure Resource Template Deployment Pipeline creates a unified and streamlined development lifecycle. Changes smoothly propagate through testing and into production, ensuring a reliable and efficient deployment process. 

Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to innovate and refine our project, delivering cutting-edge solutions to meet dynamic user needs. 

Happy coding!