Power DevOps Tools vs Power Platform Build Tools

In my previous post I mentioned that I preferred the Power DevOps Tools over Microsoft's Power Platform Build Tools in my CI/CD pipeline as they are more flexible.

To add a bit more detail, these are the benefits:

1. They are faster, or so I perceived - your mileage may vary
2. They can export both a managed and unmanaged version of a solution in the same task. This was useful in my Build pipeline as I wanted to add the managed solution into pipeline artifacts (for subsequent deployment) while committing the unmanaged solution into source control
3. They log more helpful output - in particular showing the previous and new version numbers when importing a solution

Another difference that may be better or worse depending on your scenario: Power DevOps Tools use connection strings whereas Power Platform Build Tools use service connections. Using connection strings allows you to keep more of your pipeline configuration in YAML and thus in source control.