azure-devops – Sam Touray

I’ve seen a lot of YAML pipelines with the following structure:

pool: Azure Pipelines

stages:
- stage: Dev
  jobs:
  - job:
    displayName: "Deploy to: Dev"
    steps:
    - task: AzureCLI@2
      displayName: "Run Bicep against subscription: Dev"
      inputs:
        azureSubscription: Dev
        scriptType: pscore
        scriptLocation: inlineScript
        inlineScript: az deployment sub create -l uksouth -f main.bicep -p dev.bicepparam

- stage: Test
  jobs:
  - job:
    displayName: "Deploy to: Test"
    steps:
    - task: AzureCLI@2
      displayName: "Run Bicep against subscription: Test"
      inputs:
        azureSubscription: Test
        scriptType: pscore
        scriptLocation: inlineScript
        inlineScript: az deployment sub create -l uksouth -f main.bicep -p test.bicepparam

- stage: Production
  jobs:
  - job:
    displayName: "Deploy to: Production"
    steps:
    - task: AzureCLI@2
      displayName: "Run Bicep against subscription: Production"
      inputs:
        azureSubscription: Production
        scriptType: pscore
        scriptLocation: inlineScript
        inlineScript: az deployment sub create -l uksouth -f main.bicep -p production.bicepparam

This can be improved to:

pool: Azure Pipelines

variables:
  environments: Dev,Test,Production

stages:
- ${{ each env in split(variables.environments, ',') }}:
  - stage: ${{ env }}
    jobs:
    - job:
      displayName: "Deploy to: ${{ env }}"
      steps:
      - task: AzureCLI@2
        displayName: "Run Bicep against subscription: ${{ env }}"
        inputs:
          azureSubscription: ${{ env }}
          scriptType: pscore
          scriptLocation: inlineScript
          inlineScript: az deployment sub create -l uksouth -f main.bicep -p ${{ lower(env) }}.bicepparam

The benefits are:

Avoidance of copy/paste errors
Easier to modify e.g. if we want to use Azure PowerShell instead of the Azure CLI, we just need to make the change in one place
Easier to maintain because of above
Easier to follow what the YAML does
Can see what environments are targeted by just looking at the comma separated list, would otherwise have to scroll and scrutinise all the YAML
Even better, the list of environments can be placed in a variable template, this means we can update the environments that multiple pipelines deploy to by modifying a single file, making it easier to add and remove environments e.g.

  main.yml:
  variables:
  - template: environments.yml

  environments.yml:
  variables:
    environments: Dev,Test,Production

Tag: azure-devops

Azure Pipelines: Avoid repetition by using loops