In this chapter, we looked at continuous integration and learned how it is a combination of your mindset, the process, and tools. You learned how to create build definitions using Azure Pipelines using both the graphical designer and YAML, as well as how to run builds. You learned that you can use build pipelines to compile and test your code, as well as report the outcome back to pull requests.

You learned that builds can produce outcomes, called artifacts. Artifacts are stored and retained within Azure pipelines and can be used to store reports, but are also the starting point of deployment pipelines, which you will learn about in the next chapter. You also learned about the infrastructure that you need to run builds—namely, agents and agent pools. Finally, you saw two brief examples of how to run a continuous integration build using GitLab CI and Jenkins, which are two other tools that you can use for build pipelines.

With this knowledge, you are now able to create build pipelines for your projects. You can hook up to source control and produce the builds that you will use in the next chapter to deploy your applications. With this deep knowledge of the underlying structure of tasks, jobs, stages, and pipelines, you can solve complex application-building problems.

In the next chapter, you will continue learning about pipelines, but this time for releases. You will learn how to pick up builds and release them to one or more environments.