Release Pipelines for Containerized Solutions

Question

I'm using Azure DevOps as the source code repo for my Docker containerized Angular application. In the process of creating release pipelines to deploy the code base from dev to test (then to staging and prod) I noticed that after selecting the Azure App Service deployment template, I could not specify a branch for code movement.

For example, I could not specify the dev branch for the pipeline that would move code to the test environment. Does this mean that for containerized apps I have to have separate repos for each environment: dev, test, staging, and prod? Further, does this mean that for code deployment that I would have to move, let's say, code from the master branch in the dev repo to the master branch in the test repo, and so on?

Answer 1

As with any other CI\CD pipeline what happens is the following:

1. you build your code
2. you test it
3. you package it
4. you release it

I guess you miss the fact that you create an artifact and then you release it to dev > staging > prod. In other words you promote it across environments.

As for moving the code between branches - yes, thats what you have to do anyway. Unless you want your branches to be disconnected completely between each other (which makes very little sense).