Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD)
Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD)
Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment/Delivery (CD) are important processes in modern software development methodologies, and are especially important in DevOps. These approaches help to automate various stages of development and ensure faster release of products while minimising errors.
Continuous Integration (CI)
Continuous Integration — is a practice in which developers frequently integrate their changes to the underlying code base, usually several times a day. The main goal of CI — to provide early detection of bugs that occur when code changes from different developers are merged.
CI uses an automated testing system that runs a set of tests after each commit. If the tests are successful, the changes are integrated into the main branch, which helps maintain the stable state of the project. Examples of CI systems include Jenkins, GitLab CI, Travis CI.
Continuous Deployment (CD)
Continuous Deployment and Continuous Delivery are processes that follow CI. The main difference between the two is the level of automation.
Continuous Delivery** assumes that changes to the code after CI are automatically ready to be deployed to the production environment. However, the deployment process still requires manual validation.
Continuous Deployment goes further by fully automating the process of code delivery to the production environment after all testing stages have been passed. This allows new versions of the product to be released quickly and without human intervention.
Benefits of CI/CD
- Risk mitigation through early detection of bugs and conflicts in code.
- Rapid deployment of new features and patches.
- Reduced time to market.
- Increased software stability and quality.
Incorporating CI/CD into the development process allows teams to respond faster to changes in requirements and release updates with minimal risk. These practices are becoming the standard for software development in a highly competitive and rapidly changing business environment.
