Many are wondering how the new Azure DevOps differs from the latest update of Team Foundation Server 2018. TFS will follow Azure DevOps and be renamed in the 2019 version. It will be called Azure DevOps Server. This product’s features will be delivered following the same three-month cadence used in TFS. Until then, here are a few differences to expect between the two products.
Navigation and Modularity
The most obvious difference between the cloud product and the on-premises product is the navigation. Azure DevOps is broken down into five modular pillars: Azure Boards, Azure Pipelines, Azure Repos, Azure Test Plans, and Azure Artifacts. These pillars are designed to be used together, or separately in conjunction with other ALM products. TFS will retain the original navigation until the next update. There is no set date for that release at the time of this publication.
YAML Builds
Another difference between the two products is the ability to configure YAML build pipelines using the new wizard. Once a repository is selected for the build, a YAML pipeline will automatically be created. Otherwise, Azure Pipelines will analyze the build automatically. It will then suggest a YAML template best suited for your build. To use this feature, you must have the preview feature enabled. This feature will be available in Azure DevOps Server 2019.
The cloud product also offers ten parallel jobs and unlimited CI/CD minutes for open source projects. This is currently only available for open source projects running in Azure Pipelines. There are also dozens of additional features that have not yet made it to the on-premises product. These features include being able to change the target branch of a pull request in Git, code coverage in the .NET Core task, the ability to store artifacts using Universal Packages, and so much more.
You can view current and planned features for both Azure DevOps and Azure DevOps Server by navigating to the Azure DevOps Features Timeline.