Azure Repos

In the Ultra Transcenders books

AZ-400

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

Terms in this definition

• Azure DevOps

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

• CONTROL

  Granting this on a securable gives all other permissions on it too, making it the most powerful SQL permission. At database scope that includes UNMASK and ALTER ANY MASK. Warehouse access through the Admin, Member or Contributor workspace roles carries it.

• Git

  A distributed version control system. Anything kept in Git, prompts included, gains a history of authors, timestamps, diffs and tags, and changes can be reverted.

• TFVC

  Team Foundation Version Control, a centralised system in Azure Repos that keeps history on the server and branches by path. No new features are planned, all new work goes into Git, and YAML pipelines can't use it.

• Branch permissions

  Control who may force push, contribute, edit policies or bypass them on a single branch; inherited from repository-level settings in Azure Repos.

Related terms

• AB# mention

  Type AB# and a work item number in a GitHub issue, pull request or commit to link Azure Boards items; preceding it with fix, fixes or fixed changes the item's state on merge to the default branch. Azure Repos uses just # and the number.

• Auto-merge

  Once enabled for a repository, this GitHub option merges a pull request by itself as soon as its required reviews and status checks succeed. Azure Repos calls the same idea auto-complete.

• Automatically included reviewers

  Adds named people or groups, as optional or required reviewers, to pull requests touching specified paths; an Azure Repos branch policy. GitHub uses CODEOWNERS for this.

• Branch policies

  Requirements a pull request must meet on an Azure Repos branch, such as minimum reviewers, resolved comments, linked work items, status checks and build validation. GitHub offers rulesets and branch protection rules for this.

• Branch protection

  Rules on a branch such as main (branch protection in GitHub, branch policies in Azure Repos) that stop people pushing to it directly and require reviewed pull requests for merges.

• Build validation

  Requires a passing pipeline run on a pull request's pre-merge result before completion, valid until its build expiration lapses; an Azure Repos branch policy.

• Bypass policies when completing pull requests

  A branch permission in Azure Repos that allows someone to override failing branch policies and complete the pull request anyway.

• Cherry-pick

  Copying chosen commits to a different branch. Hotfixes often reach release branches this way: from a pull request, Azure Repos branches off the target into a topic branch and opens another pull request.