Source: https://gist.github.com/killertilapia/c9e7635807e596f20a16123ceed9c48d
Running Django tests on Azure is a mix bag of confusing documentation and outdated examples. When We did this I can't shake the feeling that Python was a second class citizen in Azure.
Stuff that bugged me OR caught me flat-footed
1. Environment Variables. I get that having many options supported for declaring variables is cool but I wish Azure followed one of Python's tenets and that's "There should be one— and preferably only one —obvious way to do it.!".
Another thing that bugged me was how Azure allows declaring variables for the pipeline: why allow a `.` (period) in the declaration then explain that gets replacement with `_` (underscore) and the rest of the text capitalized under certain conditions.
Why couldn't we just stayed with YML? I never did like idea of "scripts within scripts". Again, Python's tenets: "There should be one— and preferably only one —obvious way to do it.!".
2. vmImage version. This isn't really an Azure issue but more of a Python test issue. In order to run the tests I wanted:
python manage.py test --testrunner xmlrunner.extra.djangotestrunner.XMLTestRunner --no-input --settings=settings.testing
I had to create an environment for the test to run on. So step before this was to install my environment prerequisites which is directly influenced by the vmImage version. At first, I was using: ubuntu-16.08 which was causing a Django migration error due to unsupported feature. We quickly figured out that the sqlite version that came with 16.08 was older. We also had to bump up the python version to 3.8.
If you're basic and prefer to use a UI then Azure is probably your thing. But an old school guy like me who prefers automated scripts, Azure's documentation and philosophy to cloud is an inconvenience.
