Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD)
What is the CI/CD pipeline?
A CI/CD pipeline allows you to automate steps in the delivery process of your applications, such as initiating code building, performing automated testing, and deploying it into a staging or production environment. Automated pipelines eliminate manual errors, provide consistent feedback loops for development, and allow fast product iterations. Continuous Integration (CI), is a software development process where all developers integrate code updates into a central repository multiple times a day.
Continuous Delivery (CD) applies the practice of automating the whole software release cycle on top of Continuous Integration. With CI, for a given project, each code change activates an automated build-and-test sequence, providing feedback to the developer(s) who made the change. CD involves the provisioning and deployment of infrastructure and can be manual and consist of several stages. What’s crucial is that all of these processes are completely automated, each run being completely logged and visible to the entire team.
So, a CI/CD pipeline is an integrated deployment pipeline, with automation tools and improved workflow. If properly conducted, this can minimize manual errors and enhance feedback loops throughout the software development life cycle, allowing teams to deliver smaller chunks of releases in a shorter time. The components and tools needed to build a pipeline depending on the specific needs of the team and the workflow already in place. Following phases are essential in a typical CI / CD pipeline:
• Build phase
• testing Phase
• Deployment Phase
• Automated testing phase
• Deployment to the production phase