In order to prepare for a release pipeline, you will need to get a couple of tools ready. Remember the chapter on DevOps? If not, review Chapter 9, DevOps with PowerShell first, since you need to have some understanding of the guiding principles of DevOps when you learn about release pipelines.
When working with a release pipeline, the goal is to ship code from development, to quality assurance, right into production with the least amount of friction. Yet, we still need to be in control of the process, and most of all, we must be able to trust it.
As usual, there is plenty of tooling available, either free or paid, open source or proprietary. Each tool has its benefits and drawbacks. For free and easy testing, we will create our own PowerShell module release pipeline with GitHub, AppVeyor, and the PowerShell Gallery. All principles can be...