4 ms·

I mean GH Actions is basically a re-brand of Microsoft's "Azure Pipelines". As somebody who used all previous incarnations of TFS/VSTS/AzDO build and release p

by Pxtl 3y ago

I mean GH Actions is basically a re-brand of Microsoft's "Azure Pipelines". As somebody who used all previous incarnations of TFS/VSTS/AzDO build and release pipelines: they are not good at this. This is not a team with a record of success. That Azure Pipelines is moderately usable only happened because they failed literally every other approach they tried. There was a project to allow you to run the pipelines locally so you could do the edit-run-debug loop on your own private environment without committing. It was, of course, canned. https://github.com/microsoft/azure-pipelines-agent/pull/2687/files#diff-570b52bcb927a5365c22d17a21e8e19e1ba3427c7f3ec16ea64b7b3d14e4ee20 https://github.com/microsoft/azure-pipelines-agent/pull/2687... However, there are tools to improve QOL. For example: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-azure-devops.azure-pipelines https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-azure... A vscode extension that's syntax-aware. Now, I'll be a bit controversial: if they'd used XML instead of YAML, you could have an xmlns declaration up-top that would give you validation in most decent code editors without user intervention. XML is awful, but it has a lot of useful features that we gave up when we threw the baby out with the bathwater.

woodruffw 3y ago
> I mean GH Actions is basically a re-brand of Microsoft's "Azure Pipelines". As somebody who used all previous incarnations of TFS/VSTS/AzDO build and release pipelines: they are not good at this. This is not a team with a record of success. That Azure Pipelines is moderately usable only happened because they failed literally every other approach they tried. I was under the impression (which might be wrong!) that GHA was an independent project within GitHub that was well underway before the acquisition. Are you saying that GHA was rebuilt on top of AzP, that it's just a relabeling of AzP, or something else? (I have no particular dog in it being one way or the other, but I'm curious about the history here.)
- Pxtl 3y ago
  They share a lot of code. My understanding is that it was an MS project first, but I might have that backwards. > GitHub Workflows execute on runners. The runner code is essentially a fork of the Azure Pipelines code, so it's very similar. It's also cross-platform and you can also use hosted or self-hosted runners. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/architecture/devops-for-aspnet-developers/actions-vs-pipelines https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/architecture/devops...
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    Thanks for the link -- I knew that GHA workflow runs ran on Azure, but I didn't know the workflow runner itself was a fork of Azure's runner/instrumentor. That's interesting context!
    - evntdrvn 3y ago
      if you look at the source of the GHA runner, you can see where they regex-replace all references to Azure Pipelines with GitHub Actions lol
- evntdrvn 3y ago
  the original GHA implementation was shitcanned
  - fijiaarone 3y ago
    Is that a nice way of saying we are still stuck with the original GHA implementation
ZeWaka 3y ago
> GH Actions is basically a re-brand of Microsoft's "Azure Pipelines" Probably even moreso than most people think - a large portion of the AzDo team got moved over after the acquisition to work on GitHub Actions/Projects.
jahsome 3y ago
You had me up til that last paragraph. Call me crazy but xml just hurts my eyes. I'll always take a nicely formatted yaml doc with all the pains that come with it over the horrors of angle brackets and camel case.
- Pxtl 3y ago
  XML syntax is bad, but yaml doesn't have a proper blessed batteries-included built-in schema language afaik. A well formed XML with an xmlns will have validation and autocomplete in a good editor thanks to this. JSON can do it too. Never seen it done with yaml. It's a pretty big frustration in a language that is so slow to test -- commit push run wait find the error oh I made a typo. Better code-time validation fixes this but the tooling for that in yaml is weak.

by Pxtl 3y ago

woodruffw 3y ago

> I mean GH Actions is basically a re-brand of Microsoft's "Azure Pipelines". As somebody who used all previous incarnations of TFS/VSTS/AzDO build and release pipelines: they are not good at this. This is not a team with a record of success. That Azure Pipelines is moderately usable only happened because they failed literally every other approach they tried. I was under the impression (which might be wrong!) that GHA was an independent project within GitHub that was well underway before the acquisition. Are you saying that GHA was rebuilt on top of AzP, that it's just a relabeling of AzP, or something else? (I have no particular dog in it being one way or the other, but I'm curious about the history here.)

Pxtl 3y ago
They share a lot of code. My understanding is that it was an MS project first, but I might have that backwards. > GitHub Workflows execute on runners. The runner code is essentially a fork of the Azure Pipelines code, so it's very similar. It's also cross-platform and you can also use hosted or self-hosted runners. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/architecture/devops-for-aspnet-developers/actions-vs-pipelines https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/architecture/devops...
- woodruffw 3y ago
  Thanks for the link -- I knew that GHA workflow runs ran on Azure, but I didn't know the workflow runner itself was a fork of Azure's runner/instrumentor. That's interesting context!
  - evntdrvn 3y ago
    if you look at the source of the GHA runner, you can see where they regex-replace all references to Azure Pipelines with GitHub Actions lol
evntdrvn 3y ago
the original GHA implementation was shitcanned
- fijiaarone 3y ago
  Is that a nice way of saying we are still stuck with the original GHA implementation

ZeWaka 3y ago

> GH Actions is basically a re-brand of Microsoft's "Azure Pipelines" Probably even moreso than most people think - a large portion of the AzDo team got moved over after the acquisition to work on GitHub Actions/Projects.

jahsome 3y ago

You had me up til that last paragraph. Call me crazy but xml just hurts my eyes. I'll always take a nicely formatted yaml doc with all the pains that come with it over the horrors of angle brackets and camel case.

Pxtl 3y ago
XML syntax is bad, but yaml doesn't have a proper blessed batteries-included built-in schema language afaik. A well formed XML with an xmlns will have validation and autocomplete in a good editor thanks to this. JSON can do it too. Never seen it done with yaml. It's a pretty big frustration in a language that is so slow to test -- commit push run wait find the error oh I made a typo. Better code-time validation fixes this but the tooling for that in yaml is weak.