Part 6 - YAML

What is YAML? 

YAML (YAML Ain't Markup Language) is a human-readable data serialization language that is commonly used for configuration files and in applications where data is being stored or transmitted. In the context of a build pipeline, YAML is often used to define the structure and steps of the pipeline, as well as the relationships between jobs and tasks.

In the context of CI/CD (Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment), a build pipeline is a series of steps that are executed automatically in order to build, test, and deploy software. These steps are often defined using a configuration file, and YAML is one of the formats that can be used for this purpose.

YAML build pipelines are often used with CI/CD tools like GitHub Actions, Azure Pipelines, and GitLab CI/CD. These tools allow you to define your build pipeline as a YAML file, which can be committed to your source code repository along with your application code. This makes it easy to version control your build pipeline and collaborate with others on it.

In a YAML build pipeline, you can define a series of jobs and steps that will be executed in a specific order. Each job represents a specific task that needs to be performed, such as building the application, running tests, or deploying the application. Each step represents a specific command that needs to be run, like git command, build command, test command, etc.

For example, a simple YAML pipeline might include a "build" job that runs the command to compile the application code, a "test" job that runs the command to run the unit tests, and a "deploy" job that runs the command to deploy the application to a staging or production environment.

In addition to the jobs and steps, YAML pipelines also provide some way to manage environment variables, conditional execution and also have the support for running commands on different platforms, it also allows to trigger pipelines based on different events.

Overall YAML based build pipelines are very powerful and flexible, they give you the ability to define and configure your entire CI/CD pipeline in a way that's easy to read, maintain, and understand.

Below are some examples:

Git in 30 minute or less: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVpqDapmEyI

YAML for that presentation: https://github.com/NathanClouseAX/Git123/blob/main/azure-pipelines.yml

GitHub Repo for that presentation: https://github.com/NathanClouseAX/Git123

YAML from MSFT: https://github.com/microsoft/Dynamics365-Xpp-Samples-Tools/blob/master/C...

More Reading: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cse/2022/06/14/xpp-and-git/