A build definition is just a blueprint of the tasks that are required for building a software application. In this recipe, we have used a default template to create the build definition. We can choose a blank template and create the definition by choosing the tasks available in Azure DevOps as well.
When you run the build definition (either manually or automatically, which will be discussed in the subsequent recipes), each of the tasks will be executed in the order in which you have configured them. You can also rearrange the steps by dragging and dropping them in the pipeline section.
The build process starts with getting the source code from the chosen repository and downloading the required NuGet packages, and then starts the process of building the package. Once that process is complete, it creates a package and stores it in a folder configured for the build.artifactstagingdirectory directory (refer to the Path to publish field of the Publish artifact task).
You can learn about all different type of variables in the Variables tab shown here:
