Skip to main content

CI/CD Pipelines

CI/CD Pipelines are automated workflows that streamline the process of software development, testing, and deployment. The acronym stands for Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery/Continuous Deployment (CD). The main goal is to deliver software changes to users faster and more reliably by automating a series of steps, from building the code to running tests and deploying the application.

  • Continuous Integration (CI): This is the practice of automatically building and testing code changes whenever a developer commits new code to a shared repository. The goal is to detect and fix integration issues early.

  • Continuous Delivery (CD): This is the process of automatically preparing a code change to be released to a production environment. Every change is tested and verified, so it's ready to be deployed at any time with the push of a button.

    Example: A developer makes a change to a website's login feature and pushes the code to the central repository. The CI/CD pipeline immediately kicks off:

  1. Build: The pipeline automatically compiles the new code.
  2. Test: It runs a series of automated tests, including unit tests and regression tests on the login feature to ensure it still works correctly.
  3. Deploy: If all tests pass, the pipeline automatically deploys the updated login feature to a staging environment for final review. This entire process, from code commit to deployment, is automated, allowing the team to deliver bug fixes and new features much faster.