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Migrate from Visual Studio App Center

Visual Studio App enter is scheduled for retirement on March 31, 2025.

This document outlines the migration process from Visual Studio App Center to DeployGate.

Please visit here for details about Visual Studio App Center’s retirement.

DeployGate offers comparable features to the distribution features of Visual Studio App Center. Please see the following table to compare the features of DeployGate and Visual Studio App Center.

FeatureDeployGateApp Center
App access management◯◯
App uploads via API◯◯
App distribution◯◯
App installation without an account◯×

DeployGate also offers the following features that can be useful for dogfooding and QA.

  • Capture feature that simplifies bug and error reporting
  • Installing past revisions

Upload Apps to DeployGate​

To migrate from Visual Studio App Center to DeployGate, you must first upload built apps to DeployGate. You can upload apps in two ways.

If you do not already have a DeployGate account, please visit Sign up for DeployGate Individual for information on how to create an account.

Using Azure Pipelines​

If you used Visual Studio App Center for your builds, Microsoft recommends that you export your build configurations to Azure Pipelines. After following the instructions outlined in this document to export to Azure Pipelines, you can upload from Azure Pipelines to DeployGate.

To upload from Azure Pipelines to DeployGate, you must add a DeployGate upload process to the Azure Pipelines configuration file (azure-pipelines.yml). You can use DeployGate API to upload apps with steps.bash or steps.script.

trigger:
  - main

pool:
  vmImage: 'macos-latest'

steps:
  - script: |
      curl https://deploygate.com/api/users/<owner_name>/apps \
           -H "Authorization: Bearer $(API_TOKEN)" \
           -X POST \
           -F "file=@</path/to/application_file_path>" \
           --form-string "message=sample"
    displayName: 'Upload to DeployGate'

In this example, /path/to/application_file_path specifies the app file’s (APK/AAB/IPA) path to upload the app to DeployGate. Additionally, replace <owner_name> with the DeployGate upload destination owner’s name. Replace API_TOKEN with the DeployGate API token registered as the Azure Pipelines secret. Please refer to DeployGate API Reference for information about the DeployGate API token.

Please visit the Azure Pipelines document for information on Azure Pipelines secrets, steps.bash, and steps.script.

Distribute Apps​

These steps outlined how to upload apps to DeployGate. Next, learn how to distribute apps to Team members.

Please visit Two distribution methods for details on how to distribute apps.

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