The .NET Stacks #12: Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions, .NET Foundation results, community links!

We discuss Microsoft CI/CD options, find out who's on the .NET Foundation board, and look at the busy week in the .NET community!

Dave Brock
Dave Brock

Happy Monday, everyone! Current status: still wondering if I’m just a JSON pusher (warning: link has a naughty word).

This week, we:

  • Discuss how Azure DevOps and GitHub Actions will be ironed out
  • Discuss the .NET Foundation election results
  • Check out a busy week in the community

GitHub Actions or Azure DevOps?

Hopefully by now, in 2020, you know that friends don’t let friends right-click publish. There are so many tools you can use to work with continuous integration and continuous deployment pipelines—I’d like to talk about two under Microsoft’s ownership: Azure DevOps and GitHub Actions.

As a .NET developer, you’re probably familiar with Azure DevOps (previously Team Foundation Server). It’s got a decade of battle-tested use in enterprises, with well-featured CI/CD pipelines. If you want best-in-class Microsoft tooling with either your on-prem or cloud deployments, it’s always been a clear choice.

The lines blurred a little when, in 2018, Microsoft acquired GitHub. GitHub, traditionally known for being the community’s preferred way to share code, was now bought by a company invested in open source development and an interest in bringing Microsoft-ness to new audiences. GitHub’s own CI/CD solution, GitHub Actions, is getting a lot of well-deserved recognition. And with npm joining GitHub, GitHub will definitely help improve experiences with dependency management. To further blur the lines, a lot of folks don’t know about their GitHub Enterprise offering, an on-prem solution that even has integration capabilities with Active Directory!

So what does this say for the future of Microsoft CI/CD pipelines? As a long-term strategy, Microsoft can’t expect to run two similar products with internal competition. I actually wondered about this not so long ago and was referred to an insightful conversation that occurred on the Azure Podcast with GitHub PM Sasha Rosenbaum.

She agreed that, yes, the investments will be geared toward GitHub and its vibrant community and long-term GitHub will probably win out. This isn’t to say that you need to migrate in 6 months or anything—she even mentioned a 5-year timeframe—but the future is definitely with GitHub Actions. As such, her recommendation was that there’s nothing wrong with using Azure DevOps today, but if you’re starting a new project to look into using GitHub.

Until the time comes when Microsoft has one CI/CD tool, you’ll likely see GitHub Actions build out with a stronger feature set. It’s already robust—and with its CI capabilities are right there with Azure DevOps—but has some work to do until it’s on-par with its continuous deployment functionality (release pipelines, gates, advanced permissions, and whatnot).

.NET Foundation Board of Directors election results are in

This week, we found out who would serve on the .NET Foundation Board of Directors. Out of 17 nominees, these six folks came out on top (with Beth Massi on the 7th spot as Microsoft’s one appointed board member):

It’s great to see an entirely new Board and am looking forward to seeing what comes from these fresh perspectives.

🌎 Last week in the .NET world

The Top 3

📢 Announcements

📅 Community and events

😎 Blazor

🚀 .NET Core

⛅ The cloud

📔 Languages

🔧 Tools

📱 Xamarin

🎤 Podcasts

Over at the .NET Rocks podcast, they discuss adding identity to your applications.

🎥 Videos

.NET Stacks