4 ms·

Just going to mention it here since many folks don't seem to know this but we here at Microsoft also have a cloud build (CI/CD), Git source control, Kanban (lot

Just going to mention it here since many folks don't seem to know this but we here at Microsoft also have a cloud build (CI/CD), Git source control, Kanban (lots of agile tools), etc and its all free for up-to 5 users. The build system also geared for "any developer, any platform" with support for Xcode, Android, iOS, Java, .NET, and other types of applications using our Windows or multi-platform agent. We also do unlimited private repo's for those 5 users which I know is super important to people. Details on VSTS: https://www.visualstudio.com/team-services/ https://www.visualstudio.com/team-services/

hitgeek 9y ago
thanks for reminding me about team services. I've been looking for low cost CI solutions for .net core. I'm going to give it a try.
- LyalinDotCom 9y ago
  glad to help. I always hate to "Advertise" but really VSTS is a great product, very open source and cross-platform focused and extremely great pricing model (considering the massive free tier). So few folks know about it, they hear "Visual Studio" in the name and think its just for Microsoft stack, but its 100% not. We're here for all developers, at least that is our mission.
  - polskibus 9y ago
    How are Git repositories hosted by Microsoft protected from Microsoft employees peeking at other companies code? Is there some sort of protection in case of breach or if Microsoft launches a competitor to a service whose source code is in VSTS?
    - toomanybeersies 9y ago
      Couldn't you ask that question of literally any company hosting source. Or really, any cloud storage company at all?
      - thanksgiving 9y ago
        This is where you talk about track record. Previous story somewhat tangentially related because Microsoft. https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/microsoft_on_the_issues/2014/03/28/were-listening-additional-steps-to-protect-your-privacy/ https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/microsoft_on_the_issues/... > Although our terms of service, like those of others in our industry, allowed us to access lawfully the account in this case, the circumstances raised legitimate questions about the privacy interests of our customers. > While our own search was clearly within our legal rights, I love C# and I love visual studio but I think vsts needs to at least meet gitlab with a free and open source community edition for me to consider it again. Hey, stop laughing. Stranger things have happened...
      - polskibus 9y ago
        Not really, for example GitHub features mostly relate to bug tracking, etc, whereas MS offering is much broader - they just announced an invoicing product which could kill most invoicing-related SaaS apps out there.
    - LyalinDotCom 9y ago
      That is a good question to ask, certainly any time you put data into the cloud, you are trusting a 3rd party. In this case, we here at Microsoft take security and data privacy very very seriously. Actually we even published a whitepaper on this topic, see: Visual Studio Team Services Data Protection Overview https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/articles/team-services-security-whitepaper https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/articles/team-services-se... I hope that helps.
skrebbel 9y ago
I never tried VSTS and I appreciate your "advertisement" here. Always good to learn about more options. That said, given that you're clearly competing on price I'd like to cordially help you race to the bottom :-) If you combine, say, Bitbucket and CircleCI (and maybe Trello if you must) you also get up to the same 5 users for free, but 25 free monthly CI build hours from CircleCI instead of VSTS's 4. (somewhat back on topic: I assume .net core works fine on CircleCI. I know for a fact that Mono worked fine on it 3 years ago so why wouldn't it)
juice_bus 9y ago
We switched over to VSTS from on premises TFS early this year and it has been great (Had our first hiccup yesterday). The 10+10 hosted windows/linux agents + a bit of work to make our builds concurrent have been fantastic.
plebau 9y ago
That UI though ಠ_ಠ
- caseymarquis 9y ago
  Does this use the azure ui? :( Azure seems like a good platform hindered by its unusual ui.
  - ihsw2 9y ago
    I have always found it to be a fair bit more visually appealing than AWS and more performant than Google Cloud Console. Granted it is on the more bizarre/eccentric side.
  - zamalek 9y ago
    Once you get used to it everything else seems bad. To answer your question: no, it doesn't use the Azure UI.
interger 9y ago
I'm using VSTS for hosting, building and deploying an ASP.NET Core project with Docker. I find the build and release pipeline configuration flexible enough for my needs. However there are a bunch of little things that can be better: * Currently I do not use CI or nightly/scheduled build triggers. I found that scheduled builds are always triggered even if there are no new commits. This quickly eats up the free build minutes (4 hours) and I can't justify buying more build minutes for redundant builds on a codebase that is not updated frequently. * The hosted build agents (Microsoft hosted and managed) do not always have up to date build tools. This should not be a problem if gives users flexibility to select build tools and versions. Now I feel like I'm a freeloader here as I'm using the service totally for free :D but I'm sure this problem will also be present once you start paying for more build minutes. * There is no build variables to get the git tag of the current build. Now I get that you may need to implement functionality to limit/trigger builds with git tags. I would want to know if there is a plan to make git tags first class citizens on the build and releases processes. * Sometimes I just want to quickly write a shell script within the build/release pipeline editor, without having to commit a script along my source code. Can't manually do `bash -c` either as VSTS parses and passes arguments that would then mean differently in the end. * The docs are scattered around and it took me quite a time for everything to click in my mind. For guys like me who don't have the experience of using on-premise TFS it would be great if you have a clear(er) explanation on the roles of build pipelines, agents and deployment groups, what runs what, where build artifacts reside, etc. * Azure key vault integration is very helpful, but please document what I need to authorize VSTS for key vault. Or better, automatically do this in setting up the integration. Also the randomized VSTS princpial name for Azure isn't helping. * Also if you could make the UI snappier it would be great! The above points are not total deal breaker to me. I found some notable things that I should point out: * The ability to use my own VM/machine as a build agent is pretty cool and alleviates any concern if you need some esoteric build tool. * A machine in a deployment group is simply an agent and so all the build artifacts are automatically there with enough flexibility on how you want to set them up in the machine. I do not have much experience with other deployment tools but I found this model easy to work with. * Visual Studio and Azure integration is handy and I'm looking forward for more development on this.
rjbwork 9y ago
Do you support Hg yet? Do you plan to?

hitgeek 9y ago

thanks for reminding me about team services. I've been looking for low cost CI solutions for .net core. I'm going to give it a try.

LyalinDotCom 9y ago
glad to help. I always hate to "Advertise" but really VSTS is a great product, very open source and cross-platform focused and extremely great pricing model (considering the massive free tier). So few folks know about it, they hear "Visual Studio" in the name and think its just for Microsoft stack, but its 100% not. We're here for all developers, at least that is our mission.
- polskibus 9y ago
  How are Git repositories hosted by Microsoft protected from Microsoft employees peeking at other companies code? Is there some sort of protection in case of breach or if Microsoft launches a competitor to a service whose source code is in VSTS?
  - toomanybeersies 9y ago
    Couldn't you ask that question of literally any company hosting source. Or really, any cloud storage company at all?
    - thanksgiving 9y ago
      This is where you talk about track record. Previous story somewhat tangentially related because Microsoft. https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/microsoft_on_the_issues/2014/03/28/were-listening-additional-steps-to-protect-your-privacy/ https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/microsoft_on_the_issues/... > Although our terms of service, like those of others in our industry, allowed us to access lawfully the account in this case, the circumstances raised legitimate questions about the privacy interests of our customers. > While our own search was clearly within our legal rights, I love C# and I love visual studio but I think vsts needs to at least meet gitlab with a free and open source community edition for me to consider it again. Hey, stop laughing. Stranger things have happened...
    - polskibus 9y ago
      Not really, for example GitHub features mostly relate to bug tracking, etc, whereas MS offering is much broader - they just announced an invoicing product which could kill most invoicing-related SaaS apps out there.
  - LyalinDotCom 9y ago
    That is a good question to ask, certainly any time you put data into the cloud, you are trusting a 3rd party. In this case, we here at Microsoft take security and data privacy very very seriously. Actually we even published a whitepaper on this topic, see: Visual Studio Team Services Data Protection Overview https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/articles/team-services-security-whitepaper https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/articles/team-services-se... I hope that helps.

skrebbel 9y ago

I never tried VSTS and I appreciate your "advertisement" here. Always good to learn about more options. That said, given that you're clearly competing on price I'd like to cordially help you race to the bottom :-) If you combine, say, Bitbucket and CircleCI (and maybe Trello if you must) you also get up to the same 5 users for free, but 25 free monthly CI build hours from CircleCI instead of VSTS's 4. (somewhat back on topic: I assume .net core works fine on CircleCI. I know for a fact that Mono worked fine on it 3 years ago so why wouldn't it)

juice_bus 9y ago

We switched over to VSTS from on premises TFS early this year and it has been great (Had our first hiccup yesterday). The 10+10 hosted windows/linux agents + a bit of work to make our builds concurrent have been fantastic.

plebau 9y ago

That UI though ಠ_ಠ

caseymarquis 9y ago
Does this use the azure ui? :( Azure seems like a good platform hindered by its unusual ui.
- ihsw2 9y ago
  I have always found it to be a fair bit more visually appealing than AWS and more performant than Google Cloud Console. Granted it is on the more bizarre/eccentric side.
- zamalek 9y ago
  Once you get used to it everything else seems bad. To answer your question: no, it doesn't use the Azure UI.

interger 9y ago

I'm using VSTS for hosting, building and deploying an ASP.NET Core project with Docker. I find the build and release pipeline configuration flexible enough for my needs. However there are a bunch of little things that can be better: * Currently I do not use CI or nightly/scheduled build triggers. I found that scheduled builds are always triggered even if there are no new commits. This quickly eats up the free build minutes (4 hours) and I can't justify buying more build minutes for redundant builds on a codebase that is not updated frequently. * The hosted build agents (Microsoft hosted and managed) do not always have up to date build tools. This should not be a problem if gives users flexibility to select build tools and versions. Now I feel like I'm a freeloader here as I'm using the service totally for free :D but I'm sure this problem will also be present once you start paying for more build minutes. * There is no build variables to get the git tag of the current build. Now I get that you may need to implement functionality to limit/trigger builds with git tags. I would want to know if there is a plan to make git tags first class citizens on the build and releases processes. * Sometimes I just want to quickly write a shell script within the build/release pipeline editor, without having to commit a script along my source code. Can't manually do `bash -c` either as VSTS parses and passes arguments that would then mean differently in the end. * The docs are scattered around and it took me quite a time for everything to click in my mind. For guys like me who don't have the experience of using on-premise TFS it would be great if you have a clear(er) explanation on the roles of build pipelines, agents and deployment groups, what runs what, where build artifacts reside, etc. * Azure key vault integration is very helpful, but please document what I need to authorize VSTS for key vault. Or better, automatically do this in setting up the integration. Also the randomized VSTS princpial name for Azure isn't helping. * Also if you could make the UI snappier it would be great! The above points are not total deal breaker to me. I found some notable things that I should point out: * The ability to use my own VM/machine as a build agent is pretty cool and alleviates any concern if you need some esoteric build tool. * A machine in a deployment group is simply an agent and so all the build artifacts are automatically there with enough flexibility on how you want to set them up in the machine. I do not have much experience with other deployment tools but I found this model easy to work with. * Visual Studio and Azure integration is handy and I'm looking forward for more development on this.

rjbwork 9y ago

Do you support Hg yet? Do you plan to?