Continuous deployment

Steps to set up continuous deployment from an externally hosted repo (e.g. GitHub/CodePlex/Bitbucket):

Getting the hook URL

The hook URL is the /deploy path on the Kudu service. So it looks like https://mysite.scm.azurewebsites.net/deploy. But since the service uses basic auth, you need to pass the creds in the URL. Typically, you'll want to use the site-level credentials here and not the user credentials (see Deployment-credentials). So the full URL will look like https://$mysite:BigRandomPassword@mysite.scm.azurewebsites.net/deploy

Note that you can also obtain this URL from the Azure Portal under the Configure tab, in the Deployment Trigger Url field.

One you have the URL, you can set it as a GitHub/CodePlex/Bitbucket hook, either via OAuth, or manually from those sites.

The hook expects a POST request, and supports the payload from those various sites (which are all different).

Giving the private key to the Kudu service

If the repo is private, you will also need to set up an SSH key.

The public key is given to GitHub/Bitbucket, either manually or through their OAuth API.

The private key is given to the Kudu service using the PUT /sshkey REST API. The supported key format is privacy enhanced mail (PEM). Since Kudu runs as a service (no interactive), make sure the private key PEM is not encrypted with passphrase. The ssh-keygen command, by default, will solicit passphrase, do leave it blank.

One possible way to call the REST API is using curl. e.g.

curl --user yourname -X PUT -H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8" --data "{key: 'full private key goes here!'}" http://localhost:14962/sshkey