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

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.