Azure Artifacts

In the Ultra Transcenders books

AZ-400

Each book explains Azure Artifacts in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.

Terms in this definition

• Universal Packages

  An Azure Artifacts package type for arbitrary files outside any language ecosystem. You push them with the Azure CLI or a pipeline task, and versions follow SemVer minus build metadata.

• Network Performance Monitor

  Former network monitoring solution that relied on the Log Analytics agent; it has been retired in favour of Connection Monitor.

• NuGet

  The package manager and format for .NET. Its packages can be hosted in GitHub Packages as well as in Azure Artifacts feeds.

• Azure DevOps

  Microsoft's suite of DevOps services, among them Azure Boards and Azure Pipelines.

• Container

  Something that groups data. Blob Storage containers sit inside a storage account and hold blobs much as folders hold files; Cosmos DB containers hold items and set the scope for partitioning and throughput.

• GitHub Packages

  GitHub's service for hosting packages (npm, NuGet, Maven, Gradle, RubyGems and Docker), along with its Container registry at ghcr.io. It plays the part Azure Artifacts plays in Azure DevOps.

Related terms

• GitHub Container registry

  Hosts Docker and OCI images within GitHub Packages, with fine-grained package permissions. On Azure, Azure Container Registry does this job, since Azure Artifacts lacks a container feed.

• Maven

  Java's build tool and packaging format. GitHub Packages accepts both Gradle and Maven, while Azure Artifacts feeds store these packages for Gradle clients too.

• npm

  Package manager for JavaScript, and the registry format it uses; GitHub Packages and Azure Artifacts can each store them.

• npm scope

  A prefix on package names (@scope) linked to a particular registry in the .npmrc file. With Azure Artifacts it offers a substitute for upstream sources where public registries can't be reached, though each package then has to keep its scoped name.

• Scalar

  A Git tool that began at Microsoft and tunes clones of huge repositories for speed. It replaces VFS for Git, and Microsoft Learn points to it, Git LFS or Azure Artifacts when a repository grows too big.