All roads lead to Azure. Github's user base is far bigger than Azure's user base, and Microsoft wants to eventually get as many people as possible buying IaaS (or equivalents).

The next logical step after Github Actions for CI/CD is to offer Github as a place to run the production code too. You would be buying Azure with fewer steps. It's pretty arbitrary that we develop code in one place while then going off and using a separate suite of tools and processes to run it. Having a suite for everything in one place could be very appealing to the market.

Yes, MS is intent on grabbing that cloud market as best as they can. It's phenomenal how many technologies they're coming up with to do that. They want you to use their tools, love them, and naturally start using Azure on your next project.

If they added a button that was essentially just zeit now it would be revolutionary. Especially if they had a generous free tier. Imagine one click hosting for blogs, etc. Now THAT would certainly hook people in

Exactly. First you are using Azure through Github actions and do all the leg work to develop Docker images, etc. to test your code. Then you start off hosting on a small free plan. Fast forward a bit and you're paying Azure $$$ because why learn all the IaaS esoterica when you can just click a button on Github.

That sounds a bit like Github Pages which has been a thing for a while.

Sure, if your site is solely static content, which is all GitHub pages supports. You can’t run “production code”.

I know some people use the service with a static site generator as a free way to host a blog, but it’s not really the same thing at all.

Works pretty good for blogs and in general if you use serverless tech.

However i wouldn't consider it for mission critical stuff - github's infrastructure can't be compared to actual paid-for cloud hosting.

> github's infrastructure can't be compared to actual paid-for cloud hosting.

I think the idea in this thread is that since github is owned by MS, and they have Azure, that won't be an accurate statement for very long. Github doesn't have to build that infrastructure, they just need to competently integrate into MS existing infrastructure.

I can't believe I didn't piece this together sooner but I agree with this threads premise. I'm already hosting my source on Github so why not build it there? And if I'm building it there then why not deploy it there? Rather than manage a complicated pipeline, I just `git push` and everything else just works ... all the way to massive scale.

As someone who has worked on hand-built github to AWS pipelines ... I can actually see this being the killer feature Azure needs to actually win a large market share.

The actual equivalent would be something like Azure AppService.

It's very interesting and Microsoft is THE BEST at creating those ecosystems.

I'm sure there are warts but the current develop, deploy, debug(in prod!) workflow with Azure and VSCode is supposed to be pretty awesome.

I think (hope) they intentionally avoid tight integration with Microsoft branded stuff. Even at the slightest indication of such a thing happening, I bet it would lead to an exodus and outrage among developers, however irrational that might be.

Yeah... That is a reason I could imagine. Also the lack of hype in pipelines.

This has been played out for decades before and since MSFT's containment to the desktop OS market, but also with most other capital-rich tech companies.

The brand is already MSFT Github, it just hasn't changed the site masthead. MSFT's core strategy and future goals aren't opaque. There's only 2 paths that maximize profit. Either MS bundles it up into a MS toolchain alongside hobbled alternate toolchain support, or abandon Github in parts until it's decommissioned (no need to dilute your brand). Maybe I won't be alive to see it, but I left for Gitlab because I believe this is how Github will maybe survive.

It's because there's no unified grand vision driving this and the GitHub team is an independent silo. Yes there will be duplicated efforts, but at least the GitHub login system doesn't get replaced with Microsoft Account login.

> but at least the GitHub login system doesn't get replaced with Microsoft Account login.

That's a good example of a tiny change Microsoft could do, which would make me want to leave github, hehe :)

They actually did the opposite and made it so you can log into basically any Microsoft service with a GitHub account.

Some possibilities:

- Market segmentation, the people on Azure DevOps are not likely to use GitHub Actions and vice versa. - Long term plan might be to bring both of them closer together. - Build good will (marketing).

Azure DevOps already is moving towards YAML build configurations. I wouldn't doubt it if it was the exact same tech under the hood.

Competing against yourself adds expense, but also gives you more ways to win. It can be better to capture more of the market and then converge products rather than letting someone else have the market. Or, if there are different specific needs in different niches in what is descriptively the same product class, don't converge and win in two markets that a naive analysis would have considered parts of the same market and lost part of by not meeting the different needs.

> Better integration for GitHub for the Azure DevOps suite

One small improvement I would really appreciate is a reduction in the number of clicks required to reach the real build status page. Clicking "Details" on a status row for a travis build takes me directly to the summary on travis, whereas for azure it leads to a redundant summary page hosted on github first, and requires another click to actually reach azure.

That might be short sighted. Allowing github to grow and being careful about leveraging it is a wise in the long run.

If github gets bloated with bad ideas and microsoft specific features the community will leave.