Use GitHub Actions to deploy code to Azure

There’s a lot more to building modern applications than hitting F5 and building your app. Code is only part of the process. Building an effective CI/CD (continuous integration/continuous delivery) service is a key part of fostering a devops culture and automating the software development lifecycle.

Automation is an important aspect of the process. You need to be able to run tests, drive builds, package your code, and even deploy it, simply by checking in an update or merging a pull request. Tools such as Microsoft-owned GitHub are increasingly important repositories for code, both public and private, and the workflows we build around them are key to automating the building of software.

Introducing GitHub Actions

GitHub recently made its GitHub Actions automation tool generally available. Unlike build-centric CI/CD tooling such as Jenkins or Travis, GitHub Actions is focused on your code. That’s an approach that not only makes sense for GitHub, but also can work better for developers than other tools. You’re likely already using a Git-based development workflow, using branches, pull requests, code reviews, and merges to manage the way a team of developers collaborates on an application.