Azure Pipelines - Git checkout step fails with cannot lock ref error
Utkarsh Shigihalli
on Jun 6, 2019
For one of our clients, we noticed their builds started failing at the checkout step. Looking at the logs the error was
error: cannot lock ref 'refs/remotes/origin/<branch>': there is a non-empty directory '.git/refs/remotes/origin/<branch>' blocking reference 'refs/remotes/origin/<branch>'
In this post we will see what was the root cause and how to fix it.
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Announcement: Azure DevOps Server 2019 cookbook... Go get it!
Tarun Arora
on May 30, 2019
Pleased to announce that my second book on Azure DevOps has hit the stands, this time around co-authored with fellow MVP & good friend Utkarsh Shigihalli… Go get your copy to unlock and fully leverage all that Azure DevOps server 2019 has to offer… Whether you are getting started with DevOps or are already implementing it, this book will help you accelerate your journey to DevOps…
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View branch policies of your Azure DevOps repository using Azure CLI
Utkarsh Shigihalli
on Apr 2, 2019
Branch policies in Azure DevOps repositories are a great way to enforce the team’s code quality. With right branch policies you can ensure all the developer commits meet the required conditions. However, as you add more repositories managing or revisiting these policies becomes a pain especially because you need to view repo by repo. In this post we will see how we can use Azure DevOps extension for Azure CLI to quickly view all the policies applied to the repo via command line and also see ways to create/update existing repos.
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Wish all your Azure DevOps users merry xmas with banner messages!
Tarun Arora
on Dec 17, 2018
VSTS CLI has an admin commandlet that let’s you control the banner messages on Azure DevOps interface. Apart from being able to see existing banners already in place, you can create banner messages. What’s really cool is you’ll be able to set a category for the message and the expiry datetime. How about using the banner messages to wish your users a geeky merry xmas and new years! Check out how to do this…
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Start blogging with Jekyll, GitHub and Netlify
Utkarsh Shigihalli
on Dec 10, 2018
I thought I will write a small blog post on how we host this blog. This is a JAMstack site, meaning what you see is just JavaScript, (no) APIs and Markup. We host this blog for free using Jekyll and Netlify. We also love the fact that we get to write blog posts in markdown files - commit the file and within few min your post is live!. Sounds interesting? Let me explain in detail.
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Slide Deck - Azure Operations Management Suite
Tarun Arora
on Nov 25, 2018
Continuous Monitoring for DevOps with Azure Operations Management Suite slides from my talk at the London Microsoft DevOps meetup in November 2018…
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How I built a dashboard in Azure Portal to track Gitflow feature branches
Utkarsh Shigihalli
on Nov 4, 2018
GitFlow is one of the popular branching strategies if you using Git version control. Most of the teams I have worked with generally are very satisfied using it. With fixed branch names, pull requests for code reviews, teams find that it fits very nicely with their day to day workflow. In this blog post, you will see how I built a useful dashboard in Azure portal to track whether teams following Gitflow strategy (especially their topic branches) as they should, giving teams an easy way to track stale branches and keeping their branches neat and tidy.
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Installing ASP.NET Core Site Extension for Azure App Service Using ARM template
Utkarsh Shigihalli
on Oct 25, 2018
Site Extensions add functionality to your Azure App Service and they can be added to various other resources like Azure Function app. You can easily browse and add these site extensions from the portal by going to “Extensions” tab from your “App Service”. However, when you are automating everything with Azure DevOps, you will want to do everything via as part of resource provisioning. Using ARM templates this can be automated easily. In this small blog post we will see how to install ASP.NET Core Extensions for you Azure App Services. The ASP.NET Core extension provides additional functionality for ASP.NET Core on Azure Websites such as enabling Azure logging.
How to enable Azure Hybrid License to save 40% on your Windows License Cost...
Tarun Arora
on Oct 18, 2018
Are you using Windows virtual machines in Azure? Do you have any Windows Server Datacenter virtual machines on-premise? If the answer to the first two questions is a yes, readon as you could be eligible to save 40% in compute cost for your virtual machines in Azure! Enterprises starting their digital transformation journey find it hard to justify the ramp up in the cost during the swing period of migrating services to cloud. The Azure Hybrid Benefit helps you get more value from your Windows Server licenses and save up to 40 percent on virtual machines.
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Provisioning Sitecore environment with Azure DevOps on Azure PaaS
Utkarsh Shigihalli
on Oct 15, 2018
The Sitecore Experience Platform (XP) is a popular and powerful Content Management System (CMS) used by many organizations. The digital experience software comes in various configurations based on the enterprises requirements. In this post we will see how we can provision a brand new Sitecore environment on Azure PaaS using Azure Pipelines.
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