VSTS How to Trigger a Deployment Containing Multiple Release Definitions

Question

We have 20 release definitions that need to be deployed together for a deployment to an environment.

Is there a way to link the release definitions and manually trigger a "global" release to deploy all 20 release definitions to a specific environment?

At this moment we manually start each release, lots of clicking!

Thank you!!

Answer 1

You could create/manage releases through the VSTS API.

https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/docs/integrate/api/rm/releases

specifically look at the example for "Start deployment on an environment".

An example scenario could look like this

1. Create a release from the API

   POST https://{instance}/{project}/_apis/release/releases?api-version={4.0-preview.4}
   

2. The response "A Release object" will contain key elements you need to trigger environment deployments. You'll need the Release ID and the environment ID(s). Find this in the response release ID will be returned in the response, save it, this is your key to automating environment deployments later

3. Let's say the release ID created was 77 and the environment (Production) id was 3

4. The final step is to kick off a release:

   PATCH https://{instance}/{project}/_apis/Release/releases/77/environments/3
   
   {
       "status": "inProgress",
       "scheduledDeploymentTime": null,
       "comment": null
   }