The CI environment Publishing

This section provides an overview of the principles the publishing is built upon, how it is set up, and how you can interact with it.

• Publishing overview
• How it works
  • Example scenario
  • Output example

Publishing overview

The publishing phase concludes each module's pipeline. If all previous tests succeed (i.e., no phase failed) and the pipeline is run in the main or master branch, a new module version is published to all configured target locations. Currently, we support the following target locations:

• Template Specs
• Bicep Registry
• Azure DevOps Universal Packages.

  Note: this is only available if using Azure DevOps pipelines.

Besides the publishing phase's runtime, there is also the possibility to set the switch Publish prerelease module. This switch makes it possible to publish a prerelease version in every workflow run that is not based on main or master. This can be controlled when running the module pipeline leveraging Module pipeline inputs.

Note
The version used for publishing any artifact is the same for all three target locations, which reduces the maintenance effort.

Note: The orchestration options described in the solution creation section work differently well with the publishing locations we offer in CARML. To help you select the best location for your use case, we provide further information here section.

How it works

The publishing works as follows:

1. The script utilities/pipelines/resourcePublish/Get-ModulesToPublish.ps1 gets all changed module files, including child modules, and handles the logic of propagating the appropriate module version to be used:
   1. The major (x.0) and minor (0.x) version are set based on the version.json file in the module folder.
   2. The patch (0.0.x) version is calculated based on the number of commits on the HEAD ref (aka. git height). This will cause the patch version to never reset to 0 with major and/or minor increment, as specified for semver.
   3. The module is published with a major.minor.patch version (x.y.z). For Template Specs and Bicep Registry only, a major version (x) and a major.minor version (x.y) are also updated, allowing a consumer to:
      • Reference the latest version of a major, i.e., the latest minor and patch of a major version.

        Example: Using Template Specs, the reference to a major could look like: ts/modules:microsoft.resources.resourcegroups:1 which means that the template will always consume whatever the potentially overwritten/updated version 1 contains.

      • Reference the latest version of a minor, i.e., the latest patch of a minor version.

        Example: Using the Bicep registry, the reference to a major.minor could look like: br/modules:microsoft.resources.resourcegroups:0.4 which means that the template will always consume whatever the potentially overwritten/updated version 0.4 contains.

   4. For a changed child module, the direct parent hierarchy is also registered for an update, following the same procedure as above.
   5. The list of module files paths and their versions are passed on as a array list.
2. The different publishing scripts run (Artifact, Template Spec or Bicep Registry) and publish the module to the respective target location for each item on the list.

Example scenario

Let's look at an example run where we would do a patch change on the fileShares module:

1. A new branch is created for further development of the fileShare module. Let's assume the new branch started from commit 500 on the default branch and the version.json of the fileShare module contains major and minor 0.3.
2. Bug-fixes, documentation, and security updates are added to the fileShare module by the author. The version.json file is not changed in either the child or parent module folders.
3. The author runs a manual workflow based on their development branch, with the 'Publish prerelease module' option enabled.
4. A prerelease run of publishing triggers after test and validation of the module.
   • For the child and parent modules, the module version's major and minor version is read from the version.json file in the module folder respectively. Being unchanged, it still contains the version 0.3.
   • The patch is calculated based on the total number of commits in history on the branch (independent on the module). The new branch started from commit 500 on the default branch and 1 commit has been pushed, so the total number of commits on the new branch is 501.
   • As the pipeline is not running based on the 'default branch', a prerelease segment (-prerelease) is added to the version.
   • The version results in being 0.3.501-prerelease. The child and parent modules may have different major and minor versions, but the patch version will be the same in this case. Other unmodified child modules of storageAccount will not be republished and remain with the existing version.
5. Sequential commits on the branch and runs of the module pipeline, with the 'publish prerelease' option enabled results in the following versions being published:
   • 0.3.502-prerelease
   • 0.3.503-prerelease
   • ...
   • 0.3.506-prerelease
6. When the branch is merged to the default branch, the only thing that changes is the patch version and the removal of the -prerelease segment.
   • The number of commits will at this point be calculated based on the number of commits on the default branch.
   • Assuming the development branch started from commit 500 on the default branch, and the author added 6 commits on the development branch, the prerelease versions will reach 0.3.506-prerelease.
   • Meanwhile, there can be changes (let's say 2 squashed PR merges) on the default branch that is pushing its number of commits in history further.
   • If the PR for the changes to fileShare is squash merged as commit number 503, the patch version on the child and parent module is then 503, resulting in a version 0.3.503 being published.
7. The merge triggers cascading updates in the following way:
   • The module is published with a major.minor.patch version. In addition, only for Template Specs and Bicep Registry, the module is also published with major.minor and major version updates, allowing consumers to target the latest major or latest minor version respectively.
   • All parent module are published following the steps mentioned above.

                  \         \
C499 -> C500 ---> C501 ---> C502 ---> C503 (503)
        \                            /
         D1 --> D2 --> D3 ... --> D6
        (501)  (502)  (503)      (506)

Cx - Commits on main, Dx - Commits on development branch, (x) - Calculated patch version

Output example