How to use Terraform to Create Azure DevOps Projects

This post has been republished via RSS; it originally appeared at: ITOps Talk Blog articles.

With the recent release by HashiCorp and Microsoft of the Azure DevOps Provider 0.0.1 for Terraform we look at how to use these new features to create repeatable standardized projects into Azure DevOps.

Introduction.

In this article we are going to look at the new Terraform Provider for Azure DevOps. Firstly, lets provide some useful links:

At the time of authoring this article the provider is at version 0.0.1. Functionality is still a little limited and some of the documentation needs more detail, but all the basics are there.

So What Can I Do With This?

One question that has been asked many times is "Can I automate and template Azure DevOps Projects?". Well, the answer is now yes.

The Terraform Azure DevOps Provider allows us to be able to create a standard Terraform deployment that creates a Project inside a DevOps Organization. We can use the resources to then describe what features we want enabled, disabled, or configured.

I have created a sample GitHub repo that holds the code examples we are going to look at below.

Ok, So Let's Get Started.

Like many others, I tend to break my Terraform files up into smaller sub files to make things a little easier to navigate. In the GitHub Repo I have five .tf files:

main.tf
variables.tf (used to set my var. options cleanly)
outputs.tf
ado_repository.tf (we will cover this in more detail in the article)
github_service_connection.tf (we will use this to setup a connection to the GitHub Repo)

I'm not going to cover what all of the files do in this article (there are some great blog posts out there already for that), but if you are interested in getting a detailed understanding of Terraform I recommend you check out our very own Adin Ermie.

Let's start by looking at the main.tf file. The first area to note is that we need to define the org_service_url for Azure DevOps and personal_access_token we are going to use within the Provider Block.

The Organization Service URL is just the address to your DevOps org, for example https://dev.azure.com/myorg

Have a look at the following Microsoft document for detailed steps on how to setup a Personal Access Token in Azure DevOps.

main.tf

provider "azuredevops" { version = ">= 0.0.1" # Remember to specify the org service url and personal access token details below org_service_url = "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" personal_access_token = "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" } resource "azuredevops_project" "terraform_ado_project" { project_name = var.project_name description = var.description visibility = var.visibility version_control = var.version_control work_item_template = var.work_item_template # Enable or desiable the DevOps fetures below (enabled / disabled) features = { "boards" = "enabled" "repositories" = "enabled" "pipelines" = "enabled" "testplans" = "enabled" "artifacts" = "enabled" } }

The rest of the arguments here are self-explanatory. we provide the basic options to setup the project and select to enable or disable the feature we require.

Next, we will look at the github_service_connection.tf. What we are doing here is defining a service connection into GitHub using GitHub Personal Access Tokens. Configuring GitHub PATs is documented here.

github_service_connection.tf

resource "azuredevops_serviceendpoint_github" "serviceendpoint_github" { project_id = azuredevops_project.terraform_ado_project.id service_endpoint_name = "Sample GithHub Personal Access Token" auth_personal { # Also can be set with AZDO_GITHUB_SERVICE_CONNECTION_PAT environment variable personal_access_token = "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" } }

Finally, I am using an outputs.tf to return the newly created Project ID and Project URL.

outputs.tf

output "Project_ID" { value = azuredevops_project.terraform_ado_project.id } output "Project_URL" { value = azuredevops_project.terraform_ado_project.id }

A Note About Repos.

Something that has been noted by a few people is that the Import option on the azuredevops_git_repository resource does not seem to work. Although documented as Import being a supported option (for public repos only at this time), it returns an error message.

Demo

Here is a quick demo of the code in action.

Wrap Up!

So thats it! A straightforward way to create Azure DevOps Projects within your Organization, simple and repeatable.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply