Understanding CI/CD — What is CI/CD in DevOps?
You may have heard about CI / CD pipelines from a coworker or supervisor and don’t you know what the purpose is? Pipelines for Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) have been developed as critical technologies for optimizing the development process and ensuring that software can be developed, tested, and delivered seamlessly. If you’re unfamiliar with CI/CD pipelines, don’t worry. In this article, I’m going to explain CI / CD practices in the simplest way possible.
🧭 Continuous Integration (CI)
Continuous integration (CI) is a development strategy that requires developers to merge code changes into a shared repository numerous times each day. Each integration causes automated builds and tests to be run to detect issues early in the development process. This continuous integration eliminates the creation of errors and ensures that the codebase is always working.
✈️ Continuous Delivery (CD)
Continuous delivery (CD) takes over where continuous integration ends. While CI is the process of automatically building and testing code, CD is the process of deploying all code changes to the testing or staging environment throughout the build.
Why CI/CD❓
- Early Bug Detection — CI/CD pipelines detect errors early in the development process. So, it reduces the time and cost of fixing issues.
- Consistency — This automation process ensures consistency of development, testing, and deployment, reducing the possibility of human errors.
- Faster Time to Market — The time it takes to offer new features or upgrades to end customers is reduced via rapid and reliable deployment.
- Collaboration — CI/CD encourages collaboration among team members, promoting a culture of shared responsibility.
Moreover, a CI / CD pipeline is a technique for delivering a change unit that starts with development and ends with delivery, and typically consists of the following major phases 👇
- Commit — When a modification is made by the developers, it is committed to the repository.
- Build — The repository’s source code has been integrated into the build.
- Automate Tests — The build is being tested automatically. Test automation is an essential part of any CI / CD process. This ensures that new changes don’t introduce regressions.
- Deploy — Finally, the built version will be delivered to production.
📌 Conclusion
Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) are crucial DevOps methods that try to bridge the gap between developers and operational teams. Developers may make updates and add new features more often with the help of automation. It results in increased stability for operational teams. I hope this post has given you a better understanding of the CI/CD process.
- For a deeper dive into DevOps and more insightful information, check out the full details in this comprehensive guide 👇
📚 References
