What is a release pipeline?

  Hello,

    In this blog, I'm going to explain about What is a release pipeline?

Release Pipeline:

    A release pipeline is a process to ship committed code into production by incorporating CI/CD, automated testing, and finally, software release. It includes many steps like:

• 1.Triggering a pipeline to run.

• 2.Executing tasks like environment provisioning, application deployment, testing, and collecting results.

• 3.Controlling the flow of execution.

• 4.Restricting further processing in case of event failure.

• 5.Sending notifications of success and failure.

    A release pipeline is like a workflow where the goal of all the events is to successfully deploy the software. And to achieve this precision, events are organized in such a way that each successful event triggers the next event. If any event fails, either it notifies the user or works in a pre-defined manner.

    How Does Release Pipeline Works:

    To understand how pipelines work, please look at the following steps:

• Pre-Deployment Approval: Whenever a new deployment request is triggered, the Azure pipeline verifies the need for approval before deploying a release to a stage. Once it points out that the approval is required, it sends the email notification to the appropriate approvers.

• Queue Deployment Job: Azure pipeline finds out an available automation agent and schedules the deployment job. An agent is a piece of software that runs tasks in the deployment.

• Agent Selection: Release pipeline and build pipeline agent are the same in Azure Pipeline, and you can select the appropriate agent at the run time from the release pipeline.

• Download Artifacts: The agent picks up the job and downloads all the artifacts specified in a particular release only if you haven’t opted to skip the download. Your pipeline agent understands only two types of artifacts: Azure pipelines artifacts and Jenkins artifacts.

• Run the Deployment Tasks: It is the agent's job to run the deployment job so that the app can be deployed to the target servers.

• Generate Progress Logs: While performing all the tasks, agents also create detailed logs for each step and push these logs back to Azure pipelines.

• Post-Deployment Approval: Like pre-deployment approval, in post-deployment approval, Azure pipeline checks if there is a need for deployment approval required for that stage. If the approval is required, and once it’s completed, it proceeds to trigger the deployment for the next stage.
• References: Professional -devops.com.