CI and CD Workflow
The below image describes how Continuous Integration combined with Continuous Delivery helps quicken the software delivery process with lower risks and improved quality.
We have seen how Continuous Integration automates the process of building, testing, and packaging the source code as soon as it is committed to the code repository by the developers. Once the CI step is completed, the code is deployed to the staging environment where it undergoes further automated testing (like Acceptance testing, Regression testing, etc.). Finally, it is deployed to the production environment for the final release of the product.
If the deployment to production is a manual step. In that case, the process is called Continuous Delivery whereas if the deployment to the production environment is automated, it is referred to as Continuous Deployment.
What is CI/CD?
CI And CD is the practice of automating the integration of code changes from multiple developers into a single codebase. It is a software development practice where the developers commit their work frequently to the central code repository (Github or Stash). Then there are automated tools that build the newly committed code and do a code review, etc as required upon integration.
The key goals of Continuous Integration are to find and address bugs quicker, make the process of integrating code across a team of developers easier, improve software quality, and reduce the time it takes to release new feature updates. Some popular CI tools are Jenkins, TeamCity, and Bamboo.
Continuous Integration
There could be scenarios when developers in a team, work in isolation for an extended period and only merge their changes to the master branch once their work is completed. This not only makes the merging of code very difficult, prone to conflicts, and time-consuming but also results in bugs accumulating for a long time which are only identified in later stages of development. These factors make it harder to deliver updates to customers quickly.
With Continuous Integration, developers frequently commit to a shared common repository using a version control system such as Git. A continuous integration pipeline can automatically run builds, store the artifacts, run unit tests, and even conduct code reviews using tools like Sonar. We can configure the CI pipeline to be triggered every time there is a commit/merge in the codebase.
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