DevOps has been a buzz word for quite a few years now. Many platforms have embraced the discipline and integrated it within their development life cycle. Over the years, Dynamics CRM/365 followed the trend and kept the platform modern and up to date. The introductions of solutions in CRM 2011, the introduction of the SolutionPackager and PackageDeployer, and the Microsoft.Xrm.Data.PowerShell extensions are all examples of baby steps to support the DevOps story. Some of these tools were spawned out of the necessity to support new features (for example, AppSource) with Microsoft repurposing some of its own tools for generic reuse by the public.

The recipes in this chapter will cover a few DevOps fundamentals, such as solution exports and imports, bundling configuration data with solutions, source control integration, and deployment orchestration. Stitched together, you will end up with a strong DevOps story to tell.

The following diagram depicts a development life cycle with the steps described in this chapter:

Each of the steps numbered in the preceding diagram corresponds to one or more recipes in this chapter:

1. Building solution hierarchies and incrementing versions.
2. Using SolutionPackager to save solutions in source control.
3. Patching a solution, staging a solution, and deploying a solution using PowerShell.
4. Exporting Dynamics 365 solutions using PowerShell.
5. Integrating your deployment cycles with Octopus Deploy.