Build Java apps

Azure DevOps Services | Azure DevOps Server 2022 - Azure DevOps Server 2019

You can use a pipeline to automatically:

• Build your project using Maven, Gradle, or Ant.
• Run tests and code analysis tools.
• Publish your app to your pipeline and Azure Artifacts.
• Deploy your app to Azure App Service, Azure Functions, or Azure Kubernetes Service.

If you're working on an Android project, see Build, test, and deploy Android apps.

Prerequisites

To run the following example, you must have:

• A GitHub account where you can create a repository. Create one for free.
• An Azure DevOps organization. Create one for free.
• An Azure DevOps project. If you don't have one, Create a project now.

Create a GitHub repository

Fork the following repo to your GitHub account:

https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/pipelines-java

Create a pipeline

1. Sign in to your Azure DevOps organization and go to your project.

2. Go to Pipelines, and then select New pipeline or Create pipeline if creating the first pipeline in the project.

3. Perform the steps of the wizard by first selecting GitHub as the location of your source code. You might be redirected to GitHub to sign in. If so, enter your GitHub credentials.

4. Select your repo. You might be redirected to GitHub to install the Azure Pipelines app. If so, select Approve & install.

5. When you see the Configure your pipeline tab, select Maven, Gradle, or Ant depending on how you want to build your code.

6. A azure-pipelines.yml file containing your pipeline definition is created in your repo and opened in the YAML editor. You can customize the pipeline by adding more tasks or modifying the existing tasks. For more information about the build tasks, see Build your code.

7. When you're finished editing the azure-pipelines.yml, select Save and run.

8. To commit the azure-pipelines.yml file to your repo, select Save and run again.

Select Job to watch your pipeline in action.

You now have a working YAML pipeline (azure-pipelines.yml) in your repo that's ready for you to customize! To make changes to your pipeline, select it in the Pipelines page, and then Edit the azure-pipelines.yml file.

Build environment

You can use Azure Pipelines to build Java apps without needing to set up any infrastructure of your own. You can build on Windows, Linux, or macOS images. The Microsoft-hosted agents in Azure Pipelines have modern JDKs and other tools for Java preinstalled. To know which versions of Java are installed, see Microsoft-hosted agents.

To select the appropriate image, update the following snippet in your azure-pipelines.yml file.

pool:
  vmImage: 'ubuntu-latest' # other options: 'macOS-latest', 'windows-latest'

See Microsoft-hosted agents for a complete list of images.

As an alternative to using Microsoft-hosted agents, you can set up self-hosted agents with Java installed. You can also use self-hosted agents to save more time if you have a large repo or you run incremental builds.

Build your code

You can build your Java app with Maven, Gradle, Ant, or a script. The following sections show you how to add a build step to your pipeline for each method.

Maven

With your Maven build, the following tasks are added to your azure-pipelines.yml file. Replace the values to match your project. For more information about the task options, see the Maven task.

steps:
- task: Maven@4
  inputs:
    mavenPomFile: 'pom.xml'
    mavenOptions: '-Xmx3072m'
    javaHomeOption: 'JDKVersion'
    jdkVersionOption: 'default'
    jdkArchitectureOption: 'x64'
    publishJUnitResults: true
    testResultsFiles: '**/TEST-*.xml'
    goals: 'package'

For Spring Boot, you can use the Maven task as well. Make sure that your mavenPomFile value reflects the path to your pom.xml file. For example, if you're using the Spring Boot sample repo, your path is complete/pom.xml.

Customize the build path

Adjust the mavenPomFile value if your pom.xml file isn't in the root of the repo. The file path value should be relative to the root of the repo, such as IdentityService/pom.xml or $(system.defaultWorkingDirectory)/IdentityService/pom.xml.

Customize Maven goals

Set the goals value to a space-separated list of goals for Maven to execute, such as clean package. For details about common Java phases and goals, see Apache's Maven documentation.

Gradle

With the Gradle build, the following task is added to your azure-pipelines.yml file. For more information about these options, see the Gradle task.

steps:
- task: Gradle@2
  inputs:
    workingDirectory: ''
    gradleWrapperFile: 'gradlew'
    gradleOptions: '-Xmx3072m'
    javaHomeOption: 'JDKVersion'
    jdkVersionOption: 'default'
    jdkArchitectureOption: 'x64'
    publishJUnitResults: true
    testResultsFiles: '**/TEST-*.xml'
    tasks: 'build'

Gradle wrapper

You need to have a gradlew file in your repo. If you don't have one, you can generate it by running gradle wrapper in your project's root directory. For information about creating a Gradle wrapper, see the Gradle.

Choose the version of Gradle

The version of Gradle installed on the agent machine is used unless your repo's gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties file has a distributionUrl property that specifies a different Gradle version to download and use during the build.

Adjust the build path

Adjust the workingDirectory value if your gradlew file isn't in the root of the repo. The directory value should be relative to the root of the repo, such as IdentityService or $(system.defaultWorkingDirectory)/IdentityService.

Adjust the gradleWrapperFile value if your gradlew file isn't in the root of the repo. The file path value should be relative to the root of the repo, such as IdentityService/gradlew or $(system.defaultWorkingDirectory)/IdentityService/gradlew.

Adjust Gradle tasks

Adjust the tasks value for the tasks that Gradle should execute, such as build or check. For more information about common Java Plugin tasks for Gradle, see Gradle's documentation.

Ant

With Ant build, add the following task to your azure-pipelines.yml file. Change values, such as the path to your build.xml file, to match your project configuration. For more information about these options, see the Ant task. If using the sample repo, you need to provide a build.xml file in your repo.

steps:
- task: Ant@1
  inputs:
    workingDirectory: ''
    buildFile: 'build.xml'
    javaHomeOption: 'JDKVersion'
    jdkVersionOption: 'default'
    jdkArchitectureOption: 'x64'
    publishJUnitResults: false
    testResultsFiles: '**/TEST-*.xml'

Script

To build with a command line or script, add one of the following snippets to your azure-pipelines.yml file.

Inline script

The script: step runs an inline script using Bash on Linux and macOS and Command Prompt on Windows. For details, see the Bash or Command line task.

steps:
- script: |
    echo Starting the build
    mvn package
  displayName: 'Build with Maven'

Script file

This task runs a script file that is in your repo. For details, see the Shell Script, Batch script, or PowerShell task.

steps:
- task: ShellScript@2
  inputs:
    scriptPath: 'build.sh'

Next steps

You can publish your build output to your pipeline. You can package and publish your app in a Maven package or a .war/jar file to be deployed to a web application.

Learn more about creating a CI/CD pipeline for your deployment target:

• Azure App Service
• Azure Functions
• Azure Kubernetes service